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THROUGH 

OUR UNKNOWN 
SOUTHWEST 



THE WONDERLAND OF THE UNITED STATES- 
LITTLE KNOWN AND UNAPPRECIATED — THE 
HOME OF THE CLIFF DWELLER AND THE 
HOPI, THE FOREST RANGER AND THE NAVAJO, 
— THE LURE OF THE PAINTED DESERT 



BY 

AGNES C. LAUT 

Author of The Conquest of the Great Northwest, 
Lords of the North and Freebooters of the Wilderness 




NEW YORK 

McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 

1913 



L38 



Copyright, 181S, Br 
McBRIDE. NAST & CO. 



Published May, WIS \ 



01 






o 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction i 

I The National Forests i 

II National Forests of the Southwest . . 22 

III Through the Pecos Forests .... 44 

IV The City of the Dead 60 

V The Enchanted Mesa of Acoma ... 78 

VI Across the Painted Desert 100 

VII Across the Painted Desert {continued) . 116 

VIII Grand Canon and the Petrified Forests 137 

IX The Governor's Palace of Santa Fe . .153 

X The Governor's Palace (continued) . .169 

XI Taos, the Promised Land 183 

XII Taos, the Most Ancient City in America 196 

XIII San Antonio, the Cairo of America . . 214 

XIV Casa Grande and the Gila 226 

XV San Xavier Del Bac Mission . . . .251 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

Ancient cliif dwellings in the Jemez National Forest 

Frontispiece ^ 

PAGE 
FACING 

Cliff dwellings in Manco's Canon, Colorado ... ii "^ 

Indian woman making pottery xii i^ 

Indian girl of Isleta, N. M xx i^ 

Ruins of a Hopi temple, Manzano Forest .... \^ 

In the Coconino Forest of Arizona 14 i^ 

Forest ranger fighting a ground fire with his blanket . 22 ^ 

Pueblo boys at play 34 v 

Chili peppers drying outside pueblo dwelling . . . 46 ^ 

Looking over the roofs of the adobe houses of the Zuni 

Indians 56 ^^ 

Entrance to a cliff dwelling 64 *^ 

Front door view from a cave dwelling 74 ^^ 

A Hopi wooing .... 80 *^ 

A Hopi weaver 86 ^ 

A shy little Hopi maid 92*^ 

At the water hole on the outskirts of Laguna . . .96 

A handsome Navajo boy . . . . : io6v^ 

The pueblo of Walpi 122 1/ 

The Grand Canon 140 ^ 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

FACING 

The Governor's Palace at Santa Fe I54 ^ 

Plaza in front of the Palace i6o v/ 

Street in Sante Fe i66 V 

Ancient adobe gateway 172^ 

San Ildefonso 180 / 

Taos 188 / 

Over the roofs of Taos 198"^ 

A metal worker of Taos 208 " 

A mud house of the Southwest 220 ^ 

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park .... 230 ^ 

A part of Spruce Tree House 246 "■' 

The Mission of San Xavier .... ... 254 ^' 

Church built by Indians 262 ^ 



THROUGH OUR UNKNOWN 
SOUTHWEST 



INTRODUCTION 

I AM sitting in the doorway of a house of the 
Stone Age — neolithic, paleolithic, troglodytic 
man — with a roofless city of the dead lying 
in the valley below and the eagles circling with lonely 
cries along the yawning caverns of the cliff face 
above. 

My feet rest on the topmost step of a stone stair- 
way worn hip-deep in the rocks of eternity by the 
moccasined tread of foot-prints that run back, not to 
A. D. or B. C, but to those post-glacial aeons when 
the advances and recessions of an ice invasion from 
the Poles left seas where now are deserts; when giant 
sequoia forests were swept under the sands by the 
flood waters, and the mammoth and the dinosaur 
and the brontosaur wallowed where now nestle farm 
hamlets. 

Such a tiny doorway it is that Stone Man must 
have been obliged to welcome a friend by hauling 
him shoulders foremost through the entrance, or 
able to speed the parting foe down the steep stair- 
way with a rock on his head. Inside, behind me, 
is a little dome-roofed room, with calcimined walls, 
and squared stone meal bins, and a little, high fire- 
place, and stone pillows, and a homemade flour mill 
in the form of a flat metate stone with a round grind- 



ii INTRODUCTION 

ing stone on top. From the shape and from the 
remnants of pottery shards lying about, I suspect one 
of these hewn alcoves In the inner wall was the place 
for the family water jar. 

On each side the room are tiny doorv\^ays leading 
by stone steps to apartments below and to room.s 
above; so that you may begin with a valley floor 
room which you enter by ladder and go halfway to 
the top of a 500-foot cliff by a series of interior lad- 
ders and stone stairs. Flush with the floor at the 
sides of these doors are the most curious little round 
"cat holes" through the walls — "cat holes" for 
a people who are not supposed to have had any 
cats; yet the little round holes run from room to 
room through all the walls. 

On some of the house fronts are painted emblems 
of the sun. Inside, round the wall of the other 
houses, runs a drawing of the plumed serpent — 
"Awanya," guardian of the waters — whose pres- 
ence always presaged good cheer of water in a desert 
land growing drier and drier as the Glacial Age re- 
ceded, and whose serpent emblem in the sky you 
could see across the heavens of a starry night in the 
Milky Way. Lying about in other cave houses are 
stone " bells " to call to meals or prayers, and cobs 
of corn, and prayer plumes — owl or turkey feath- 
ers. Don't smile and be superior! It isn't a hun- 
dred years ago since the common Christian idea of 
angels was feathers and wings; and these Stone Peo- 
ple lived — well, when did they live? Not later 
than 400 A. D., for that was when the period of 




Cliff dwellings in Manet's Canon, Colorado — a dead city of 

forgotten people who may have been contemporaries of 

ancient Egypt 



INTRODUCTION iii 

desiccation, or drought from the recession of the 
glacial waters, began. 

" The existence of man in the Glacial Period is es- 
tablished," says Winch ell, the great western geolo- 
gist, " that implies man during the period when flour- 
ished the large mammals now extinct. In short, 
there is as much evidence pointing to America as to 
Asia as the primal birthplace of man." Now the 
ice invasion began hundreds of thousands of years 
ago; and the last great recession is set at about 10,000 
years; and the implements of Stone Age man are 
found contemporaneous with the glacial silt. 

There is not another section in the whole world 
where you can wander for days amid the houses 
and dead cities of the Stone Age; where you can lit- 
erally shake hands with the Stone Age. 

Shake hands? Isn't that putting it a little strong? 
It doesn't sound like the dry-as-dust dead collections 
of museums. It may be putting it strong; but it is 
also meticulously and simply — true. A few doors 
away from the cave-house where I sit, lies a little 
body — no, not a mummy I We are not in Egypt. 
We are in America ; but we often have to go to Egypt 
to find out the wonders of America. Lies a little 
body, that of a girl of about eighteen or twenty, 
swathed in otter and beaver skins with leg bindings 
of woven yucca fiber something like modern burlap. 
Woven cloth from 20,000 to 10,000 B. C? Yes I 
That is pretty strong, isn't it? 'Tis when you come 
to consider it; our European ancestors at that date 



IV INTRODUCTION 

were skipping through Hyrcanian Forests clothed 
mostly in the costume Nature gave them; Herbert 
Spencer would have you believe, skipping round with 
simian gibbering monkey jaws and claws, clothed 
mostly in apes' hair. Yet there lies the little lady 
in the cave to my left, the long black hair shiny and 
lustrous yet, the skin dry as parchment still holding 
the finger bones together, head and face that of a 
human, not an ape, all well preserved owing to the 
gypsum dust and the high, dry climate in which the 
corpse has lain. 

In my collection, I have bits of cloth taken from 
a body which archasologists date not later than 400 
A. D. nor earlier than 8,000 B. C, and bits of corn 
and pottery from water jars, placed with the dead to 
sustain them on the long journey to the Other World. 
For the last year, I have worn a pin of obsidian which 
you would swear was an Egyptian scarab if I had not 
myself obtained it from the ossuaries of the Cave 
Dwellers in the American Southwest. 

Come out now to the cave door and look up and 
down the canon again ! To right and to left for a 
height of 500 feet the face of the yellow tufa preci- 
pice is literally pitted with the windows and doors 
of the Stone Age City. In the bottom of the valley 
is a roofless dwelling of hundreds of rooms — " the 
cormorant and the bittern possess it; the owl also 
and the raven dwell In it; stones of emptiness; thorns 
In the palaces; nettles and brambles in the fortresses; 
and the screech owl shall rest there." 

Listen ! You can almost hear it — the fulfillment 



INTRODUCTION v 

of Isaiah's old prophecy — the lonely " hoo-hoo- 
hoo " of the turtle dove; and the lonelier cry of the 
eagle circling, circling round the empty doors of the 
upper cliffs ! Then, the sharp, short bark-bark-bark 
of a fox off up the canon in the yellow pine forests 
towards the white snows of the Jemez Mountains; 
and one night from my camp in this caiion, I heard 
the coyotes howling from the empty caves. 

Below are the roofless cities of the dead Stone 
Age, and the dancing floors, and the irrigation canals 
used to this day, and the stream leaping down from 
the Jemez snows, which must once have been a rush- 
ing torrent where wallowed such monsters as are 
known to-day only in modern men's dreams. 

Far off to the right, where the worshipers must 
always have been in sight of the snowy mountains 
and have risen to the rising of the desert sun over 
cliffs of ocher and sands of orange and a sky of tur- 
quoise blue, you can see the great Kiva or Ceremon- 
ial Temple of the Stone Age people who dwelt in this 
canon. It is a great concave hollowed out of the 
white pumice rock almost at the cliff top above the 
tops of the highest yellow pines. A darksome, cav- 
ernous thing it looks from this distance, but a won- 
derful mid-air temple for worshipers when you climb 
the four or five hundred ladder steps that lead to it 
up the face of a white precipice sheer as a wall. 
What sights the priests must have witnessed 1 I can 
understand their worshiping the rising sun as the first 
rays came over the caiion walls in a shield of fire. 
Alcoves for meal, for incense, for water urns, mark 



vi INTRODUCTION 

the inner walls of this chamber, too. Where the 
ladder projects up through the floor, you can descend 
to the hollowed underground chamber where the 
priests and the council met; a darksome, eerie place 
with sipapu — the holes in the floor — for the mystic 
Earth Spirit to come out for the guidance of his peo- 
ple. Don't smile at that idea of an Earth Spirit I 
What do we tell a man, who has driven his nerves 
too hard in town? — To go back to the Soil and let 
Dame Nature pour her invigorating energies into 
him ! That's what the Earth Spirit, the Great Earth 
Magician, signified to these people. 

Curious how geology and archaeology agree on the 
rise and evanishment of these people. Geology says 
that as the ice invasion advanced, the northern races 
were forced south and south till the Stone Age folk 
living in the roofless City of the Dead on the floor 
of the valley were forced to take refuge from them 
in the caves hollowed out of the cliff. That was 
any time between 20,000 B.C. and 10,000 B.C. 
Archaeology says as the Utes and the Navajo and 
the Apache — Asthapascan stock — came ramping 
from the North, the Stone Men were driven from 
the valleys to the Inaccessible cliffs and mesa table 
lands. " It was not until the nomadic robbers 
forced the pueblos that the Southwestern people 
adopted the crowded form of existence," says Archae- 
ology. Sounds like an explanation of our modern 
skyscrapers and the real estate robbers of modern 
life, doesn't it? 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Then, as the Glacial Age had receded and drought 
began, the cave men were forced to come down from 
their cliff dwellings and to disperse. Here, too, is 
another story. There may have been a great cata- 
clysm; for thousands of tons of rock have fallen 
from the face of the caiion, and the rooms remain- 
ing are plainly only back rooms. The Hopi and 
Moki and Zuni have traditions of the " Heavens 
raining fire; " and good cobs of corn have been found 
embedded in what may be solid lava, or fused adobe. 
Pajarlto Plateau, the Spanish called this region — 
" place of the bird people," who lived in the cliffs 
like swallows; but thousands of years before the 
Spanish came, the Stone Age had passed and the 
cliff people dispersed. 

What in the world am I talking about, and where? 
That's the curious part of it. If it were in Egypt, 
or Petrje, or amid the sand-covered columns of 
Phrygia, every tourist company in the world would 
be arranging excursions to it; and there would be 
special chapters devoted to it in the supplementary 
readers of the schools; and you wouldn't be — well, 
just au fait, if you didn't know; but do you know 
this wonder- world is in America, your own land? 
It is less than forty miles from the regular line of 
continental travel; $6 a single rig out, $14 a double; 
$ I to $2 a day at the ranch house where you can 
board as you explore the amazing ancient civiliza- 
tion of our own American Southwest. This particu- 
lar ruin is in the Frijoles Canon; but there are hun- 



vIII INTRODUCTION 

dreds, thousands, of such ruins all through the South- 
west in Colorado and Utah and Arizona and New 
Mexico. By joining the Archaeological Society of 
Santa Fe, you can go out to these ruins even more 
inexpensively than I have indicated. 

A general passenger agent for one of the largest 
transcontinental lines in the Northwest told me that 
for 191 1, where 60,000 people bought round-trip 
tickets to our own West and back — pleasure, not 
business — over 120,000 people bought tickets for 
Europe and Egypt. I don't know whether his 
figures covered only the Northwest of which he was 
talking, or the whole continental traffic association; 
but the amazing fact to me was the proportion he 
gave — one to our own wonders, to two for abroad. 
I talked to another agent about the same thing. He 
thought that the average tourist who took a trip to 
our own Pacific Coast spent from $300 to $500, 
while the average tourist who went to Europe spent 
from $1,000 to $2,000. Many European tourists 
went at $500; but so many others spent from $3,000 
to $5,000, that he thought the average spendings 
of the tourist to Europe should be put at $1,000 to 
$2,000. That puts your proportion at a still more 
disastrous discrepancy — thirty million dollars versus 
one hundred and twenty million. The Statist of 
London places the total spent by Americans in Europe 
at nearer three hundred million dollars than one hun- 
dred and twenty million. 

Of the 3,700,000 people who went to the Seattle 



INTRODUCTION Ix 

Exposition, it is a pretty safe guess that not 100,000 
Easterners out of the lot saw the real West. What 
did they see? They saw the Exposition, which was 
like any other exposition; and they saw Western 
cities, that are imitations of Eastern cities; and they 
patronized Western hotel rotundas and dining places, 
where you pay forty cents for Grand Junction and 
Hood River fruit, which you can buy in the East for 
twenty-five; and they rode in the rubberneck cars with 
the gramophone man who tells Western variations 
of the same old Eastern lies; and they came back 
thoroughly convinced that there was no more real 
West. 

And so 120,000 Americans yearly go to Europe 
spending a good average of $1,000 apiece. We 
scour the Alps for peaks that everybody has climbed, 
though there are half a dozen Switzerlands from 
Glacier Park in the north to Cloudcroft, New Mex- 
ico, with hundreds of peaks which no one has climbed 
and which you can visit for not more than fifty dol- 
lars for a four weeks' holiday. We tramp through 
Spain for the picturesque, quite oblivious of the fact 
that the most picturesque bit of Spain, about 10,000 
years older than Old Spain, is set right down in the 
heart of America with turquoise mines from which 
the finest jewel in King Alphonso's crown was taken. 
We rent a " shootin' box in Scotland " at a trifling 
cost of from $1,200 to $12,000 a season, because 
game is " so scarce out West, y' know." Yet I can 
direct you to game haunts out West where you can 
shoot a grizzly a week at no cost at all but your own 



X INTRODUCTION 

courage; and bag a dozen wild turkeys before break- 
fast; and catch mountain trout faster than you can 
string them and pose for a photograph; and you 
won't need to lie about the ones that got away, nor 
boast of what it cost you ; for you can do it at two 
dollars a day from start to finish. It would take 
you a good half-day to count up the number of tour- 
ist and steamboat agencies that organize sightseeing 
excursions to go and apostrophize the Sphinx, and 
bark your shins and swear and sweat on the Pyra- 
mids. Yet it would be a safe wager that outside of- 
ficial scientific circles, there Is not a single organiza- 
tion in America that knows we have a Sphinx of our 
own in the West that antedates Egyptian archaeology 
by 8,000 years, and stone lions older than the col- 
umns of Phrygia, and kings' palaces of 700 and 
1,000 rooms. Am I yarning; or dreaming? 
Neither! Perfectly sober and sane and wide awake 
and just In from spending two summers in those 
same rooms and shaking hands with a corpse of the 
Stone Age. 

A young Westerner, who had graduated from 
Harvard, set out on the around-the-world tour that 
was to give him that world-weary feeling that was 
to make him live happy ever afterwards. In Naga- 
saki, a little brown Jappy-chappie of great learning, 
who was a prince or something or other of that sort, 
which made It possible for Harvard to know him, 
asked in choppy English about " the gweat, the vely 
gweat antl-kwattles In y'or Souf Wes'." When 
young Harvard got It through his head that " anti- 



INTRODUCTION xi 

kwatties " meant antiquities, he rolled a cigarette 
and went out for a smoke; but it came back at him 
again in Egypt. They were standing below the chin 
of an ancient lady commonly called the Sphinx, when 
an English traveler turned to young America. " I 
say," he said; " Yankeedom beats us all out on this 
old dame, doesn't it? You've a carved colossus in 
your own West a few trifling billion years older than 
this, haven't you? " Young America, with a weak- 
ness somewhere in his middle, " guessed they had." 
Then looking over the old jewels taken from the 
ruins of Pompeii, he was asked, " how America was 
progressing excavating her ruins;" and he heard 
for the first time in his life that the finest crown 
jewel in Europe came from a mine just across the 
line from bis own home State. The experience gave 
him something to think about. 

The incident Is typical of many of the 120,000 
people who yearly trek to Europe for holiday. fVe 
have to go abroad to learn how to come home. We 
go to Europe and find how little we have seen of 
America. It is when you are motoring in France 
that you first find out there is a great " Camino 
Real" almost 1,000 miles long, much of it above 
cloud line, from Wyoming to Texas. It's some 
European who has " a shootin' box " out in the 
Pecos, who tells you about it. Of course, if you like 
spending $12,000 a year for "a shootin' box" in 
Scotland, that is another matter. There are various 
ways of having a good time ; but when I go fishing I 
like to catch trout and not be a sucker. 



xli INTRODUCTION 

Spite of the legend, "Why go to Europe? See 
America first," we keep on going to Europe to see 
America. Why? For a lot of reasons; and most 
of them lies. 

Some fool once said, and we keep on repeating it 
— that it costs more to go West than It does to go 
to Europe. So it does, if " going West " means 
staying at hotels that are weak imitations of the 
Waldorf and the Plaza, where you never get a sniff 
of the real West, nor meet anyone but traveling East- 
erners like yourself; but if you strike away from the 
beaten trail, you can see the real West, and have 
your holiday, and go drunk on the picturesque, and 
break your neck mountain climbing, and catch more 
trout than you can lie about, and kill as much bear 
meat as you have courage, at less expense than It will 
cost you to stay at home. From Chicago to the 
backbone of the Rockies will cost you something 
over $33 or $50 one way. You can't go half-way 
across the Atlantic for that, unless you go steerage; 
and if you go West " colonist," you can go to the 
backbone of the Rockies for a good deal less than 
thirty dollars. Now comes the crucial point! If 
you land in a Western city and stay at a good hotel, 
expenses are going to out-sprint Europe;, and you 
will not see any more of the West than if you had 
gone to Europe. Choose your holiday stamping 
ground, Sundance Canon, South Dakota; or the New 
Glacier Park; or the Pecos, New Mexico; or the 
White Mountains, Arizona; or the Indian Pueblo 
towns of the Southwest; or the White Rock Caiion 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

of the Rio Grande, where the most important of the 
wonderful prehistoric remains exist; and you can 
stay at a ranch house where food and cleanliness 
will be quite as good as at the Waldorf for from $1.50 
to $2 a day. You can usually find the name of the 
ranch house by inquiries from the station agent where 
you get off. The ranch house may be of adobe and 
look squatty; but remember that adobe squattiness 
is the best protection against wind and heat; and in- 
side, you will find hot and cold water, bathroom, and 
meals equal to the best hotels in Chicago and New 
York. In New York or Chicago, that amount would 
afford you mighty chancy fare and only a back hall 
room. I know of hundreds of such ranch houses all 
along the backbone of the Rockies. 

Next comes the matter of horses and rigs. If 
you stay at one of the big hotels, you will pay from 
$5 to $10 a day for a rig, and $20 for a motor. 
Out at the ranch house, you can rent team, driver 
and double rig at $4; or a pony at $20 for a month, 
or buy a burro outright for from $5 to $10. Even 
if the burro takes a prize for ugliness, remember he 
also takes a prize for sure-footedness; and he doesn't 
take a prize for bucking, which the broncho often 
does. Figure up now the cost of a month's holiday; 
and I repeat — it will cost you less than staying at 
home. But if this total is still too high, there are 
ways of reducing the expense by half. Take your 
own tent; and $20 will not exceed "the grub box" 
contents for a month. Or all through the Rockies 
are deserted shacks, mining and lumber shanties, 



xlv INTRODUCTION 

herders' cabins, horse camps. You can quarter your- 
self in one of these for nothing; and the sole ex- 
pense will be " the grub box; " and my tin trunk for 
camp cooking has never cost me more than $50 a 
month for four people. Or best and most novel ex- 
perience of all — along White Rock Cafion of the 
Rio Grande, in Mesa Verde Park, Colorado, are 
thousands of plastered caves, the homes of the cliff 
dwellers. You reach them by ladder. There is no 
danger of wolves, or damp. Camp in one of them 
for nothing wherever the water in the brook below 
happens to be good. Hundreds of archseologists, 
who come from Egypt, Greece, Italy, England, to 
visit these remains, spend their summer holiday this 
way. Why can't you? Or if you are not a good 
adventurer into the Unknown alone, then join the 
summer school that goes out to the caves from Santa 
Fe every summer. 

Is it safe? That question to a Westerner is a 
joke. Safer, much safer, than in any Eastern city I 
I have slept in ranch cabins of the White Moun- 
tains, in caves of the cliff dwellers on the Rio Grande, 
in tents on the Saskatchewan; and I never locked a 
door, because there wasn't any lock; and I never at- 
tempted to bar the door, because there wasn't any 
need. Can you say as much of New York, or Chi- 
cago, or Washington? The question may be asked 
— Will this kind of a holiday not be hot in summer? 
You remember, perhaps, crossing the backbone of the 
Rockies some mid-summer, when nearly everything 
Inside the pullman car melted into a jelly. Yes, it 



INTRODUCTION xv 

will be hot if you follow the beaten trail; for a rail- 
road naturally follows the lowest grade. But if you 
go back to the ranch houses of the Upper Mesas and 
of foothills and canons, you will be from 7,000 to 
10,000 feet above sea level, and will need winter 
wraps each night, and may have to break the 
ice for your washing water in the morning — I 
did. 

Another reason why so many Americans do not see 
their own country is that while one species of fool 
has scared away holiday seekers by tales of extor- 
tionate cost, another sort of fool wisely promulgates 
the lie — a lie worn shiny from repetition — that 
" game is scarce in the West." " No more big 
game " — and your romancer leans back with wise- 
acre air to let that lie sink in, while he clears his 
throat to utter another — "trout streams all fished 
out." In the days when we had to swallow logic 
undigested in college, we had it impressed upon us 
that one single specific fact was sufficient to refute 
the broadest generality that was ever put In the form 
of a syllogism. Well, then, — for a few facts as to 
that " no-game " lie ! 

In one hour you can catch in the streams of the 
Pecos, or the Jemez, or the White Mountains, or 
the Upper Sierras of California, or the New Glacier 
Park of the North, more trout than you can put on 
a string. If you want confirmation of that fact, 
write to the Texas Club that has its hunting lodge 
opposite Grass Mountain, and they will send you the 
picture of one hour's trout catch. By measurement, 



xv*i INTRODUCTION 

the string Is longer than the height of a water barrel; 
and these were fish that didn't get away. 

Last year, twenty-six bear were shot in the Sangre 
de Chrlsto Canon in three months. 

Two years ago, mountain lions became so thick 
in the Pecos that hunters were hired to hunt them 
for bounty; and the first thing that happened to one 
of the hunters, his horse was throttled and killed by 
a mountain lion, though his little spaniel got revenge 
by treeing four Hons a few weeks later, and the hun- 
ter got three out of the four. 

Near Glorieta, you can meet a rancher who last 
year earned $3,000 of hunting bounty scrip, if he 
could have got it cashed. 

In the White Mountains last year, two of the larg- 
est bucks ever known in the Rockies were trailed by 
every hunter of note and trailed in vain. Later, 
one was shot out of season by stalking behind a 
burro; but the other still haunts the canons defiant 
of repeater. 

From the caves of the cliff-dwellers along the Rio 
Grande, you can nightly hear the coyote and the fox 
bark as they barked those dim stone ages when the 
people of these silent caves hunted here. 

The week I reached Frijoles Cafion, a flock of wild 
turkeys strutted in front of Judge Abbott's Ranch 
House not a gun length from the front door. 

The morning I was driving over the Pajarito 
Mesa home from the cliff caves, we disturbed a herd 
of deer. 

Does all this sound as if game was depleted? It 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

is if you follow the beaten trail, just as depleted as 
it would be if you tried to hunt wild turkey down 
Broadway, New York; but it isn't if you know where 
to look for it. Believe me — though It may sound 
a truism — you won't find big game in hotel rotundas 
or pullman cars. 

Or, if your quest is not hunting but studying game, 
what better ground for observation than the Wichita 
in Oklahoma? Here a National Forest has been 
constituted a perpetual breeding ground for native 
American game. Over twenty buffalo taken from 
original stock in the New York Park are there — 
back on their native heath; and there are two or three 
very touching things about those old furry fellows 
taken back to their own haunts. In New York's 
parks, they were gradually degenerating — getting 
heavier, less active, ceasing to shed their fur annually. 
When they were set loose in the Wichita Game Re- 
sort, they looked up, sniffed the air from all four 
quarters, and rambled off to their ancestral pasture 
grounds perfectly at home. When the Comanches 
heard that the buffalo had come back to the Wichita, 
the whole tribe moved in a body and camped outside 
the fourteen- foot fence. There they stayed for the 
better part of a week, the buffalo and the Coman- 
ches, silently viewing each other. It would have 
been worth Mr. Nature Faker's while to have known 
their mutual thoughts. 

There is another lie about not holidaying West, 
which is not only persistent but cruel. When the 
worker is a health as well as rest seeker, he is told 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

that the West does not want him, especially if he is 
what is locally called " a lung-er; " and there is just 
enough truth in that lie to make it persistent. It is 
true the consumptive is not wanted on the beaten 
trail, in the big general hotel, in the train where 
other people want draughts of air, but he can't stand 
them. On the beaten trail, he is a danger both to 
himself and to others — especially if he hasn't money 
and may fall a burden on the community; but that is 
only a half truth which is usually a lie. Let the 
other half be known! All through the West along 
the backbone of the Rockies, from Montana to 
Texas, especially in New Mexico and Arizona, are 
the tent cities — communities of health seekers living 
in half-boarded tents, or mosquito-wired cabins that 
can be steam-heated at night. There are literally 
thousands of such tent dwellers all through the 
Rocky Mountain States; and the cost Is as you make 
it. If you go to a sanitarium tent city, you will have 
to pay all the way from $15 to $25 a week for 
house, board, nurse, medicine and doctor's attend- 
ance; but if you buy your own portable house and do 
your own catering, the cost will be just what you 
make It. A house will cost $50 to $100; a tent, $10 
to $20. 

Still another baneful lie that keeps the American 
from seeing America first Is that our New World 
West lacks "human Interest;" lacks "the pictur- 
esqueness of the shepherds In Spain and Switzer- 
land," for Instance; lacks " the historic marvels " of 
church and monument and relic. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

If there be any degree in lies, this is the pastmaster 
of them all. Will you tell me why " the human in- 
terest " of a legend about Dick Turpin's head fes- 
tering on Newgate, England, is any greater to Amer- 
icans than the truth about Black Jack of Texas, 
whose head flew off into the crowd, when the sup- 
port was removed from his feet and he was hanged 
down in New Mexico? Dick Turpin was a high- 
wayman. Black Jack was a lone-hand train robber. 
Will you tell me why the outlaws of the borderland 
between England and Scotland are more interesting 
to Americans than the bands of outlaws who used 
to frequent Horse-Thief Caiion up the Pecos, or 
took possession of the cliff-dwellers' caves on the 
Rio Grande after the Civil War? Why are Copt 
shepherds in Egypt more picturesque than descend- 
ants of the Aztecs herding countless moving masses 
of sheep on our own sky-line, lilac-misty, Upper 
Mesas? What is the difference in quality value be- 
tween a donkey in Spain trotting to market and a 
burro in New Mexico standing on the plaza before 
a palace where have ruled eighty different governors, 
three different nations? Why are skeletons and 
relics taken from Pompeii more Interesting than the 
dust-crumbled bodies lying in the caves of our own 
cliffs wrapped in cloth woven long before Europe 
knew the art of weaving? Why is the Sphinx 
more wonderful to us than the Great Stone Face 
carved on the rock of a cliff near Cochiti, New Mex- 
ico, carved before the Pharaohs reigned; or the stone 
lions of an Assyrian ruin more marvelous than the 



XX INTRODUCTION 

two great stone lions carved at Cochltl? When you 
find a church in England dating before William the 
Conqueror, you may smack your lips with the zest 
of the antiquarian; but you'll find in New Mexico 
not far from Santa Fe ruins of a church — at the 
Gates of the Waters, Guardian of the Waters — 
that was a pagan ruin a thousand years old when 
the Spaniards came to America. 

You may hunt up plaster cast reproduction of 
reptilian monsters in the Kensington Museum, Lon- 
don; but you will find the real skeleton of the gen- 
tleman himself, with pictures of the three-toed horse 
on the rocks, and legends of a Plumed Serpent not 
unlike the wary fellow who interviewed Eve — all 
right here in your own American Southwest, with the 
difference in favor of the American legend; for the 
Satanic wriggler, who walked into the Garden on his 
tail, went to deceive; whereas the Plumed Serpent 
of New Mexican legend came to guard the pools 
and the springs. 

To be sure, there are 400,000 miles of motor 
roads in Europe; but isn't it worth while to climb a 
few mountains in America by motor? That is what 
you can do following the " Camino Real " from 
Texas to Wyoming, or crossing the mountains of 
New Mexico by the great Scenic Highway built for 
motors to the very snow tops. 

And if you take to studying native Indian life, at 
Laguna, at Acoma, at Taos, you will find yourself 
in such a maze of the picturesque and the legendary 
as you cannot find anywhere else in the wide world 




All Imlian girl of Islela, New Mexico, i-arrymt; a water 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

but America. This is a story by itself — a beautiful 
one, also in spots a funny one. For instance, one 
summer a woman of international fame from Ox- 
ford, England, took quarters in one of the pueblos at 
Santa Clara or thereabout to study Indian arts and 
crafts. One night in her adobe quarters, her or- 
derly British soul was aroused by such a dire din of 
shouting, fighting, screams, as she thought could come 
only from some inferno of crime. She sprang out 
of bed and dashed across the placito in her night- 
dress to her guardian protector in the person of an 
old Indian. He ran through the dark to see what 
the matter was, while she stood in hiding of the wall 
shadows curdling in horror of " bluggy deeds." 

" Pah," said the old fellow coming back, " dat 
not'ing! Young man, he git marry an' dey — how 
you call? — chiv-ar-ee-heem." 

"Then, what are you laughing at?" demanded 
the irate British dame ; for she could not help seeing 
that the old fellow was literally doubling in suffo- 
cated laughter. " How dare you laugh? " 

" I laugh, Mees," he sputtered out, " 'cos you 
scare me so bad when you call, I jomp in my coat 
mistake for my pants. Dat's all." 

It would pay to cultivate a little home sentiment, 
wouldn't it? It would pay to let a little daylight In 
on the abysmal blank regarding the wonder-land of 
our own world — wouldn't It? 

I don't know whether the affectation recognized 
as " the foreign pose " comes foremost or hinder- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

most as a cause of this neglect of the wonders of our 
own land. When you go to our own Western Won- 
der Land, you can't say you have been abroad with 
a great long capital A; and it is wonderful what a 
paying thing that pose is in a harvest of " fooleries." 
There is a well-known case of an American author, 
who tried his hand on delineating American life and 
was severely let alone because he was too — not 
abroad, but broad. He dropped his own name, as- 
sumed the pose of a grand dame familiar with the 
Inner penetralia and sacred secrets of the exclusive 
circle of the American Colony in Paris. His books 
have " gone off " like hot cross buns. Before, they 
were broad. Now they are abroad; and, like the 
tourist tickets, they are selling two to one. 

The stock excuse among foreign poseurs for the 
two to one preference of Europe to America is that 
" America lacks the picturesque, the human, the his- 
toric." A straightforward falsehood you can al- 
ways answer; but an implied falsehood masking be- 
hind knowledge, which Is a vacuum, and superiority, 
which Is pretense — is another matter. Let us take 
the dire and damning deficiencies of America I 

" America lacks the picturesque." Did the an- 
cient dwelling of the Stone Age sound to you as If it 
lacked the picturesque? I could direct you to fifty 
such picturesque spots in the Southwest alone. 

There Is the Enchanted Mesa, with its sister mesa 
of Acoma — Islands of rock, sheer precipice of yel- 
low tufa for hundreds of feet — amid the Desert 
sand, light shimmering like a stage curtain, herds ex- 



INTRODUCTION xxiil 

aggerated in huge, grotesque mirage against the lav- 
ender light, and Indian riders, brightly clad and pic- 
turesque as Arabs, scouring across the plain; all this 
reachable two hours' drive from a main railroad. 
Or there are the three Mesas of the Painted Desert, 
cities on the flat mountain table lands, ancient as the 
Aztecs, overlooking such a roll of mountain and 
desert and forest as the Tempter could not show 
beneath the temple. Or, there is the White House, 
an ancient ruin of Cafion de Chelly (Shay) forty 
miles from Fort Defiance, where you could put a 
dozen White Houses of Washington. 

" But," your European protagonist declares, " I 
don't mean the ancient and the primeval. I mean 
the modern peopled hamlet type." All right! 
What is the matter with Santa Fe? Draw a circle 
from New Orleans up through Santa Fe to Santa 
Barbara, California; and you'll find old missions 
galore, countless old towns of which Santa Fe, with 
its twin-towered Cathedral and old San Miguel 
Church, is a type. Santa Fe, itself, is a bit of old 
Spain set down in mosaic in hustling, bustling Amer- 
ica. There is the Governor's Palace, where three 
different nations have held sway; and there is the 
Plaza, where the burros trot to market under loads 
of wood picturesque as any donkeys in Spain; and 
there is the old Exchange Hotel, the end of the Santa 
Fe Trail, where Stephen B. Elklns came in cowhide 
boots forty years ago to carve out a colossal fortune. 
At one end of a main thoroughfare, you can see the 
site of the old Spanish Gareta prison, in the walls of 



xxlv INTRODUCTION 

which bullets were found embedded in human hair. 
And if you want a little Versailles of retreat away 
from the braying of the burros and of the humans, 
away from the dust of street and of small talk — 
then of a May day when the orchard is in bloom and 
the air alive with the song of the bees, go to the old 
French garden of the late Bishop Lamy! Through 
the cobwebby spring foliage shines the gleam of the 
snowy peaks; and the air is full of dreams precious 
as the apple bloom. 

What was the other charge? Oh, yes — "lacks 
the human," whatever that means. Why are leg- 
ends of border forays in Scotland more thrilling than 
true tales of robber dens in Horse-Thief Canon and 
the cliff houses of Flagstaff and the Frijoles, where 
renegades of the Civil War used to hide? Why are 
the multi-colored peasant workers of Brittany or Bel- 
gium more interesting than the gayly dressed peons 
of New Mexico, or the Navajo boys scouring up and 
down the sandy arroyos? Why is the story of Jack 
Cade any more " human " than the tragedy of the 
three Vermont boys, Stott, Scott and Wilson, hanged 
in the Tonto Basin for horses they did not steal 
in order that their assassins might pocket $5,000 
of money which the young fellows had brought 
out from the East with them? Why are not all 
these personages of good repute and ill repute as 
famous to American folklore hunters as Robin Hood 
or any other legendary heroes of the Old World? 

Driven to the last redoubt, your protagonist for 
Europe against America usually assumes the air of 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

superiority supposed to be the peculiar prerogative 
of the gods of Olympus, and declares: "Yes — 
but America lacks the history and the art of the old 
associations in Europe." 

"Lacks history?" Go back fifty years in our 
own West to the transition period from fur trade 
to frontier, from Spanish don living In idle baronial 
splendor to smart Yankeedom invading the old ex- 
clusive domain in cowhide boots ! Go back another 
fifty years ! You are in the midst of American feu- 
dalism — fur lords of the wilderness ruling domains 
the area of a Europe, Spanish Conqulstadores march- 
ing through the desert heat clad cap-a-pie In burnished 
mail; Governor Prince's collection at Santa Fe has 
one of those cuirasses dug up in New Mexico with 
the bullet hole through the metal right above the 
heart. Another fifty years back — and the century 
war for a continent with the Indians, the downing 
of the old civilization of America before a sort of 
Christian barbarism, the sword In one hand, the cross 
in the other, and behind the mounted troops the big 
iron chest for the gold — Iron chests that you can 
see to this day among the Spanish families of the 
Southwest, rusted from burial in time of war, but 
strong yet as In the centuries when guarded by secret 
springs such iron treasure boxes hid all the gold 
and the silver of some noble family in New Spain. 
When you go back beyond the days of New Spain, 
you are amid a civilization as ancient as Egypt's — 
an era that can be compared only to the myth age 
of the Norse Gods, when Lokl, Spirit of Evil, smiled 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

with contempt at man's poor efforts to invade the 
Realm of Death. It was the age when puny men 
of the Stone Era were alternately chasing south be- 
fore the glacial drift and returning north as the 
waters receded, when huge leviathans wallowed amid 
sequoia groves; and if man had domesticated crea- 
tures, they were three-toed horses, and wolf dogs, 
and wild turkeys and quail. Curiously enough, rem- 
nants of some sort of domesticated creatures are 
found in the cave men's houses, centuries before the 
coming of horses and cattle and sheep with the Span- 
ish. The trouble is, up to the present when men 
like Curtis and dear old Bandelier and Burbank, and 
the whole staff of the Smithsonian and the School 
of Santa Fe have gone to work, we have not taken 
the trouble in America to gather up the prehistoric 
legends and ferret out their race meaning. We have 
fallen too completely in the last century under the 
blight of evolution, which presupposes that these cave 
races were a sort of simian-jawed, long-clawed, gib- 
bering apes spending half their time up trees throw- 
ing stones on the heads of the other apes below, and 
the other half of their time either licking their chops 
in gore or dragging wives back to caves by the hair 
of their heads. You remember Kipling's poem on 
the neolithic man, and Jack London's fiction. Now 
as a matter of fact — which is a bit disturbing to all 
these accretions of pseudo-science — the remains of 
these cave people don't show them to have been sim- 
ian-jawed apes at all. They had woven clothing 
when our ancestors were a bit liable to Anthony 



INTRODUCTION xxvil 

Comstock's activities as to clothes. They had dec- 
orated pottery ware of which we have lost the pig- 
ments, and a knowledge of irrigation which would 
be unique in apes, and a technique in basketry that I 
never knew a monkey to possess. Some day, when 
the evolutionary piffle has passed, we'll study out these 
prehistoric legends and their racial meaning. 

As to the "lack of art," pray wake up! The 
late Edwin Abbey declared that the most hopeful 
school of art in America was the School of the South- 
west. Look up Lotave's mural drawings at Santa 
Fe, or Lungrun's wonderful desert pictures, or Mo- 
ran's or Gamble's, or Harmon's Spanish scenes — 
then talk about " lack of decadent art " if you will, 
but don't talk about " lack of art." Why, in the 
ranch house of Lorenzo Hubbell, the great Navajo 
trader, you'll find a $200,000 collection of purely 
Southwestern pictures. 

How many of the two to one protagonists of Eu- 
rope know, for instance, that scenic motor highways 
already run to the very edge of the grandest scenery 
in America? You can motor now from Texas to 
Wyoming, up above 10,000 feet much of it, above 
cloud line, above timber line, over the leagueless 
sage-bush plains, in and out of the great yellow pine 
forests, past Cloudcroft — the skytop resort — up 
through the orchard lands of the Rio Grande, across 
the very backbone of the Rockies over the Santa Fe 
Ranges and on north up to the Garden of the Gods 
and all the wonders of Colorado's National Park. 



xxvili INTRODUCTION 

With the exception of a very bad break in the White 
Mountains of Arizona, you can motor West past the 
southern edge of the Painted Desert, past Laguna 
and Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, past the Petri- 
fied Forests, where a dekige of sand and flood has 
buried a sequoia forest and transmuted the beauty 
of the tree's life into the beauty of the jewel, into 
bars and beams and spars of agate and onyx the 
color of the rainbow. Then, before going on down 
to California, you can swerve into Grand Caiion, 
where the gods of fire and flood have jumbled and 
tumbled the peaks of Olympus dyed blood-red into 
a swimming canon of lavender and primrose light 
deep as the highest peaks of the Rockies. 

In California, you can either motor up along the 
coast past all the old Spanish Missions, or go in be- 
hind the first ridge of mountains and motor along the 
edge of the Big Trees and the Yosemite and Tahoe. 
You can't take your car into these Parks; first, be- 
cause you are not allowed; second, because the risks 
of the road do not permit it even if you were allowed. 

Is it safe? As I said before, that question is a 
joke. I can answer only from a life-time knowledge 
of pretty nearly all parts of the West — and that 
from a woman's point of view. Believe me the days 
of " shootin' irons " and " faintin' females " are for- 
ever past, except in the undergraduate's salad dreams. 
(You are safer in the cave dwellings of the Stone 
Age, in the Pajarlto Plateau of the cliff " bird peo- 
ple," in the Painted Desert, among the Indians of 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

the Navajo Reserve than you are in Broadway, New 
York, or Piccadilly, London. I would trust a young 
friend of mine — boy or girl — quicker to the West- 
ern environment than the Eastern. You can get into 
mischief in the West if you hunt for it; but the mis- 
chief doesn't come out and hunt you. Also, danger 
spots are self-evident on precipices of the Western 
wilds. They aren't self-evident; danger spots are 
glazed and paved to the edges over which youth 
goes to smash in the East, 

What about cost? Aye, there's the rub! 

First, there's the steamboat ticket to Europe, about 
the same price as or more than the average round trip 
ticket to the Coast and back; but — please note, 
please note well — the agent who sells the steamboat 
ticket gets from forty to lOo per cent, bigger com- 
mission on it than the agent who sells the railroad 
tickets; so the man who is an agent for Europe can 
afford to advertise from forty to lOO per cent, more 
than the man who sells the purely American ticket. 

Secondly, European hotel men are adepts at 
catering to the lure of the American sightseer. (Of 
course they are: it's v/orth one hundred to two hun- 
dred million dollars to them a year.) In the Amer- 
ican West, everybody is busy. Except for the real 
estate man, they don't care one iota whether you 
come or stay. 

Thirdly, when you go to Europe, a thousand hands 
are thrust out to point you the way to the interesting 
places. Incidentally, also, a thousand hands are 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

thrust out to pick your pocket, or at least relieve It of 
any superfluous weight. In our West, who cares a 
particle what you do; or who will point you the way? 
The hotels are expensive and for the most part lo- 
cated In the most expensive zone — the commercial 
center. It Is only when you get out of the expense 
zone away from commercial centers and railway, that 
you can live at $i or $2 a day, or If you have your 
own tent at fifty cents a day; but It Isn't to the real es- 
tate agent's Interests to have you go away from the 
commercial center or expense zone. Who Is there 
to tell you what or where to see off the line of heat 
and tips? Outside the National Park wardens and 
National Forest Rangers, there Isn't anyone. 

How, then, are you to manage? Frankly, I 
never knew of either monkeys or men accomplishing 
anything except in one way — just going out and 
doing it. Choose what you want to see; and go 
there 1 The local railroad agent, the local Forest 
Ranger, the local ranch house, will tell you the rest; 
and naturally, when you go into the wilderness, don't 
leave all your courtesy and circumspection and com- 
mon-sense back in town. Equipped with those three, 
you can " See America First," and see it cheaply. 



CHAPTER I 

THE NATIONAL FORESTS, A SUMMER PLAYGROUND 
FOR THE PEOPLE 

IF a health resort and national playground were 
discovered guaranteed to kill care, to stab apathy 
into new life, to enlarge littleness and slay list- 
lessness and set the human spirit free from the 
nagging worries and toil-wear that make you feel 
like a washed-out rag at the end of a humdrum 
year — imagine the stampede of the lame and the 
halt In body and spirit; the railroad excursions and 
reduced fares; the disputations of the physicians and 
the rage of the thought-ologists at present coining 
money rejuvenating neurotic humanity! 

Yet such a national playground has been discov- 
ered; and it isn't in Europe, where statisticians com- 
pute that Americans yearly spend from a quarter to 
half a billion dollars; and it isn't the Coast-to-Coast 
trip which the president of a transcontinental told 
me at least a hundred thousand people a year tra- 
verse. A health resort guaranteed to banish care, 
to stab apathy, to enlarge littleness, to slay listless- 
ness, would pretty nearly put the thought-ologists 
out of commission. Yet such a summer resort exists 
at the very doors of every American capable of 
scraping together a few hundred dollars — $200 at 



2 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

the least, $400 at the most. It exists in that " twi- 
light zone " of dispute and strong language and pea- 
nut politics known as the National Forests. 

In America, we have foolishly come to regard 
National Forests as solely allied with conservation 
and politics. That is too narrow. National For- 
ests stand for much more. They stand for a 
national playground and all that means for national 
health and sanity and joy in the exuberant life of the 
clean out-of-doors. In Germany, the forests are not 
only a source of great revenue in cash; they are a 
source of greater revenue In health. They are a 
holiday playground. In America, the playground 
exists, the most wonderful, the most beautiful play- 
ground in the whole world — and the most acces- 
sible ; but we haven't yet discovered it. 

Of the three or four million people who have 
attended the Pacific Coast Expositions of the past 
ten years, it is a safe wage that half went, not to see 
the Exposition (for people from a radius round Chi- 
cago and Jamestown and Buffalo had already seen a 
great Exposition) but they went to see the Exposi- 
tion as an exponent of the Great West. How much 
of the Great West did they really see? They saw 
the Alaska Exhibit. Well — the Alaska Exhibit 
was afterwards shown in New York. They saw the 
special buildings assigned to the special Western 
States. Well — the special Western States had 
special buildings at the other expositions. What else 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 3 

of the purely West they saw, I shall give in the 
words of three travelers: 

*' Been a great trip " (Two Chicagoans talking in 
duet) . " We've seen everything and stopped off 
everywhere. We stopped at Denver and Salt Lake 
and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Portland 
and Seattle ! " 

" What did you do at these places? " 

*' Took a taxi and saw the sights, drove through 
the parks and so on. Saw all the residences and 
public buildings. Been a great trip. Tell you the 
West is going ahead." 

" It has been a detestable trip " (A New Yorker 
relieving surcharged feelings) . " It has been a skin 
game from start to finish, pullman, baggage, hotels, 
everything. And how much of the West have we 
really seen? Not a glimpse of It. We had all seen 
these Western cities before. They are not the West. 
They are bits of the East taken up and set down in 
the West. How is the Easterner to see the West? 
It isn't seeing it to go flying through these prairie 
stations. Settlement and real life and wild life are 
always back from the railroad. How are we to get 
out and see that unless we can pay ten dollars a day 
for guides? I don't call it seeing the mountains to 
ride on a train through the easiest passes and sleep 
through most of them. Tell us how we are to get 
out and see and experience the real thing? " 

" H'm, talk about seeing the West " (This time 
from a Texas banker). "Only time we got away 



4 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

from the excursion party was when a land boomster 
took us up the river to see an irrigation project. 
That wasn't seeing the West. That was a buy-and- 
sell proposition same as we have at home. What 
I want to know is how to get away from that. 
That boomster fellow was an Easterner, any- 
way." 

Which of these three really found the playground 
each was seeking? Not the duet that went round 
the cities in a sightseeing car and judged the West 
from hotel rotundas. Not the New Yorker, who 
saw the prairie towns fly past the car windows. Not 
the Texans who were guided round a real estate pro- 
ject by an Eastern land boomster. And each 
wanted to find the real thing — had paid money to 
find a holiday playground, to forget care and stab 
apathy and enlarge life. And each complained of 
the extortionate charges on every side in the city life. 
And two out of three went back a little disappointed 
that they had not seen the fabled wonders of the 
West — the big trees, the peaks at close range, the 
famous canons, the mountain lakes, the natural 
bridges. When I tried to explain to the New 
Yorker that at a cost of one-tenth what the big hotels 
charge, you could go straight into the heart of the 
mountain western wilds, whether you are a man, 
woman, child, or group of all three — could go 
straight out to the fabled wonders of big trees and 
mountain lakes and snowy peaks — I was greeted 
with that peculiarly New Yorky look suggestive of 
Ananias and De Rougement. 




The imposing ruins of a jirehistoric Hopi temple near 
Punta de Agua, Manzano Forest 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 5 

Sadder is the case of the Invalid migrating West. 
He has come with high hopes looking for the 
national health resort. Does he find it? Not once 
in a thousand cases. If health seekers have money, 
they take a private house in the city, where the best 
of air is at its worst; but many invalids are scarce of 
money, and come seeking the health resort at great 
pecuniary sacrifice. Do they find it? Certainly not 
knocking from boarding house to boarding house and 
hotel to hotel, re-infecting themselves with their own 
germs till the very telephone booths have to be 
guarded. At one famous " lung " city where I stayed, 
I heard three invalids coughing life away along the 
corridor where my room happened to be. The 
charge for those stuffy rooms was $2 and $3 and $5 
a day without meals. At a cost of $10 for train 
fare, I went out to one of the National Forests — the 
pass over the Divide 11,000 feet, the village center 
of the Forest 8,000 feet above sea level, the charge 
with meals at the hotel $10 a week. Better still, 
$10 for a roomy tent, $1.50 for a camp stove and as 
much or as little as you like for a fur rug, and the 
cost of meals would have been seventy-five cents a 
day at the hotel, seventy-five cents for life in air that 
was almost constant sunshine, air as pure and life- 
giving as the sun on Creation's first day. That alti- 
tude would probably not suit all invalids — that is 
for a doctor to say; but certainly, whether one is out 
for health or play, that regimen is cheaper and more 
life-giving than a stuffy hotel at $2, $3 and $5 a day 
for a room alone. 



6 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

It Is incredible when you come to think of it. 
Here is a nation of ninety miUion people scouring 
the earth for a playground; and there is an undis- 
covered playground in its own back yard, the most 
wonderful playground of mountain and forest and 
lake in the whole world; a playground in actual area 
half the size of a Germany, or France, with wonders . 
of cave and waterway and peak unknown to Ger- 
many or France. What are the railroads thinking 
about? If three million people visited an exposition 
to see the West, how many would yearly visit the 
National Forests if the railroads granted facilities, 
and the ninety million Americans knew how? It is 
absurd to regard the National Forests purely as 
timber; and timber for politics! They are a nation's 
playground and health resort; and one of these times 
will come a Peary or an Abruzzi discovering them. 
Then we'll give him a prize and begin going. 

You will not find Newport; and you will not find 
Lenox; and you will not find Saratoga in the 
National Forests. Neither will you find a dress 
parade except the painter's brush with its vesture of 
flame in the upper alpine meadows. And you will 
not find gaping on-lookers to break down fences and 
report your doings, unless it be a Douglas squirrel 
swearing at you for coming too near his cache of pine 
cones at the foot of some giant conifer. There is 
small noise of things doing in the National Forests; 
but there is a great tinkling of waters; and there are 
many voices of rills with a roar of flood torrents at 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 7 

rain time, or thunder of avalanche when the snows 
come over a far ridge in spray fine as a waterfall. 
In fair weather, you may spare yourself the trouble 
of a tent and camp under a stretch of sky hung with 
stars, resinous of balsams, spiced with the life of the 
cinnamon smells and the ozone tang. There will be 
lakes of light as well as lakes of water, and an all-day 
diet of condensed sunbeams every time you take a 
breath. Your bed will be hemloclc boughs — be 
sure to lay the branch-end out and the soft end in or 
you'll dream of sleeping transfixed and bayoneted on 
a nine foot redwood stump. Sage brush smells and 
cedar odors, you will have without paying for a cedar 
chest. If you want softer bed and mixed perfumes, 
better stay in Newport. 

The Forestry Department will not resent your 
coming. Their men will welcome you and help you 
to find camping ground. 

Meanwhile, before the railroads have wakened up 
to the possibilities of the National Forests as a play- 
ground, how is the lone American man, woman, child, 
or group of all three, to find the way to the National 
Forests? What will the outfit cost; and how is the 
camper to get established? 

Take a map of the Western States. Though there 
are bits of National Forests in Nebraska and Kansas 
and the Ozarks, for camping and playground pur- 
poses draw a line up parallel with the Rockies from 
New Mexico to Canada. Your playground is from 
that line westward. To me, there Is a peculiar attrac- 



8 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

tion in the forests of Colorado. Nearly all are from 
8,000 to 11,000 feet above sky-line — high, dry 
park-like forests of Engelmann spruce clear of brush 
almost as your parlor floor. You will have no diffi- 
culty in recognizing the Forests as the train goes pant- 
ing up the divide. Windfall, timber slash, stumps 
half as high as a horse, brushwood, the bare poles and 
blackened logs of burnt areas lie on one side — Public 
Domain. Trees with two notches and a blaze mark 
the Forest bounds; trees with one notch and one 
blaze, the trail; and across that trail, you are out of 
the Public Domain in the National Forests. There 
is not the slightest chance of your not recognizing the 
National Forests. Windfall, there is almost none. 
It has been cleared out and sold. Of timber slash, 
there is not a stick. Wastage and brush have been 
carefully burned up during snowfall. Windfall, dead 
tops and ripe trees, all have been cut or stamped with 
the U. S. hatchet for logging off. These Colorado 
Forests are more like a beautiful park than wild land. 
Come up to Utah; and you may vary your camping 
in the National Forests there, by trips to the wonder- 
ful canons out from Ogden, or to the natural bridges 
in the South. In the National Forests of California, 
you have pretty nearly the best that America can 
offer you : views of the ocean in Santa Barbara and 
Monterey; cloudless skies everywhere; the big trees 
in the Sequoia Forest; the Yosemite in the Stanislaus; 
forests in the northern part of the State where you 
could dance on the stump of a redwood or build a 
cabin out of a single sapling; and everywhere in the 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 9 

northern mountains, are the voices of the waters and 
the white, burnished, shining peaks. I met a woman 
who found her playground one summer by driving up 
in a tented wagon through the National Forests from 
Colorado to Montana. Camp stove and truck bed 
were in the democrat wagon. An outfitter supplied 
the horses for a rental which I have forgotten. The 
borders of most of the National Forests may be 
reached by wagon. The higher and more intimate 
trails may be essayed only on foot or on horseback. 

How much will the trip cost? You must figure 
that out for yourself. There is, first of all, your rail- 
way fare from the point you leave. Then there is 
the fare out to the Forest — usually not $10. Go 
straight to the supervisor or forester of the district. 
He will recommend the best hotel of the little moun- 
tain village where the supervisor's ofiice is usually 
located. At those hotels, you will board as a tran- 
sient at $10 a week; as a permanent, for less. In 
many of the mountain hamlets are outfitters who will 
rent you a team of horses and tented wagon; and you 
can cater for yourself. In fact, as to clothing, and 
outfit, you can buy cheaper camp kit at these local 
stores than in your home town. Many Eastern 
things are not suitable for Western use. For 
instance, it is foolish to go into the thick, rough forests 
of heavy timber with an expensive eastern riding suit 
for man or woman. Better buy a $4 or $6 or $8 
khaki suit that you can throw away when you have 
torn it to tatters. An Eastern waterproof coat will 



lo THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

cost you from $io to $30. You can get a yellow 
cowboy slicker (I have two), which is much more 
serviceable for $2.50 or $3. As to boots, I prefer 
to get them East, as I like an elk-skin leather which 
never shrinks in the wet, with a good deal of cork in 
the sole to save jars, also a broad sok to save your 
foot in the stirrup; but avoid a conventional riding 
boot. Too hot and too stiff ! I like an elk-skin that 
will let the water out fast as it comes in if you ever 
have to wade, and which will not shrink in the drying. 
If you forswear hotels and take to a sky tent, or 
canvas in misty weather, better carry eatables in what 
the guides call a tin " grub box, " in other words a 
cheap $2 tin trunk. It keeps out ants and things ; and 
you can lock it when you go away on long excursions. 
As to beds, each to his own taste I Some like the 
rolled rubber mattress. Too much trouble for me. 
Besides, I am never comfortable on it. If you camp 
near the snow peaks, a chill strikes up to the small of 
your back in the small of the morning. I don't care 
to feel like using a derrick every time I roll over. 
The most comfortable bed I know is a piece of 
twenty-five cent oilcloth laid over the slicker on hem- 
lock boughs, fur rug over that, with suit case for 
pillow, and a plain gray blanket. The hardened 
mountaineer will laugh at the next recommendation; 
but the town man or woman going out for play or 
health is not hardened, and to attempt sudden harden- 
ing entails the endurance of a lot of aches that are apt 
to spoil the holiday. You may say you like the cold 
plunge in the icy water coming off a snowy mountain. 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS ii 

I confess I don't; and you'll acknowledge, even if you 
do like it, you are in such a hurry to come out of it 
that you don't linger to scrub. I like my hot scrub ; 
and you can have that only by taking along (no, not 
a rubber bath) a $1.50 camp stove to heat the water 
in the tent while you are eating your supper out round 
the camp fire that burns with such a delicious, barky 
smell. Besides, late in the season, there will be rains 
and mist. Your camp stove will dry out the tent 
walls and keep your kit free of rain mold. Do you 
need a guide? That depends entirely on yourself. 
If you camp under direction and within range of the 
district forester, I do not think you do. 

Whether you go out as a health seeker, or a 
pleasure seeker, $8 to $10 will buy you a miner's 
tent — a miner's, preferable to a tepee because the 
walls lift the canvas roof high enough not to bump 
your head; $2 will buy you a tin trunk or grub box; 
$1.50 will cover the price of oilcloth to spread over 
the boughs which you lay all over the floor to keep 
you above the earth damp; $2 will buy you a little 
tin camp stove to keep the inside of your tent warm 
and dry for the hot night bath; $10 will cover cost of 
pail and cooking utensils. That leaves of what 
would be your monthly expenses at even a moderate 
hotel, $125 for food — bacon, flour, fresh fruit; and 
your food should not exceed $10 each a month. If 
you are a good fisherman, you will add to the larder, 
by whipping the mountain streams for trout. If you 
need an attendant, that miner's tent is big enough for 
two. Or if you will stand $5 or $6 more expense, 



12 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

buy a tepee tent for a bath and toilet room. There 
will be windy days in fall and spring when an extra 
tent with a camp stove in it will prove useful for the 
nightly hot bath. 

What reward do you reap for all the bother? 
You are away from all dust irritating to weak lungs. 
You are away from all possibility of re-infecting your- 
self with your own disease. Except in late autumn 
and early spring, you are living under almost cloudless 
skies, in an atmosphere steeped in sunshine, spicy with 
the healing resin of the pines and hemlocks and 
spruce, that not only scent the air but literally perme- 
ate it with the essences of their own life. You are 
living far above the vapors of sea level, in a region 
luminous of light. Instead of the clang of street car 
bells and the jangle of nerves tangled from too many 
humans in town, you hear the flow and the sing and 
the laughter and the trebles of the glacial streams 
rejoicing in their race to the sea. You climb the 
rough hills; and your town lungs blow like a whale 
as you climb; and every beat pumps inertia out and 
the sun-healing air in. If an invalid, you had better 
take a doctor's advice as to how high you should 
camp and climb. In town, amid the draperies and 
the portieres and the steam-heated rooms, an Invalid 
is seeking health amid the habitat of mummies. In 
the Forests, whether you will or not, you live in sun- 
shine that is the very elixir of life; and though the 
frost sting at night, it is the sting of pulsing, super- 
abundant life, not the lethargy of a gradual decay. 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 13 

At the southern edge of the National Forests in 
the Southwest dwell the remnants of a race, can be 
seen the remnants of cities, stand houses near enough 
the train to be touched by your hand, that run back in 
unbroken historic continuity to dynasties preceding 
the Aztecs of Mexico or the Copts of Egypt. When 
the pyramids were young, long before the flood gates 
of the Ural Mountains had broken before the inun- 
dating Aryan hordes that overran the forests and 
mountains of Europe to the edge of the Netherland 
seas, this race which you can see to-day dwelling in 
New Mexico and Arizona were spinning their wool, 
working their silver mines, and on die approach of 
the enemy, withdrawing to those eagle nests on the 
mountain tops which you can see, where only a rope 
ladder led up to the city, or uncertain crumbling steps 
cut in the face of the sheer red sandstone. 

And besides the prehistoric in the Forests — 
what will you find? The plains below you like 
a scroll, the receding cities, a patch of smoke. 
You had thought that sky above the plains a cloudless 
one, air that was pure, buoyant champagne without 
dregs. Now the plains are vanishing in a haze of 
dust, and you — you are up in that cloudless air, 
where the light hits the rocks in spangles of pure 
crystal, and the tang of the clearness of it pricks your 
sluggish blood to a new, buoyant, pulsing life. You 
feel as if somehow or other that existence back there 
in towns and under roofs had been a life with cob- 
webs on the brain and weights on the wings of the 
spirit. I wonder If it wasn't? I wonder If the 



14 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

ancients, after all, didn't accord with science in ascrib- 
ing to the sun, to the god of Light, the source of all 
our strength? Things are accomplished not in the 
thinking, but in the clearness of the thinking; and here 
is the realm of pure light. 

Presently, the train carrying you up to the Forests 
of the Southwest gives a bump. You are in dark- 
ness — diving through some tunnel or other; and 
when you come out, you could drop a stone sheer 
down to the plains a couple of miles. That is not so 
far as up in South Dakota. In Sundance Canon 
off the National Forests there, you can drop a pebble 
down seven miles. That's not as the crow flies. It 
is as the train climbs. But patience I The road into 
Sundance Caiion takes you to the top of the world, to 
be sure; but that is only 7,000 feet up; and this little 
Moffat Road in Colorado takes you above timber 
line, above cloud line, pretty nearly above growth line, 
12,000 feet above the sea; at 11,600 you can take 
your lunch inside a snow shed on the Moffat Road. 

Long ago, men proved their superiority to other 
men by butchering each other in hordes and droves 
and shambles; Alva must have had a good 100,000 
corpses to his credit in the Netherlands. Today, men 
make good by conquering the elements. For four 
hours, this little Colorado road has been cork-screw- 
ing up the face of a mountain pretty nearly sheer as a 
wall; and for every twist and turn and tunnel, some 
engineer fellow on the job has performed mathe- 
matical acrobatics; and some capitalist behind the 
engineer — the man behind the modern gun of con- 




From a lookout point in the Coconino Forest of Arizona 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 15 

quest — has paid the cost. In this case, it was David 
Moffat paid for our dance in the clouds — a mining 
man, who poked his brave little road over the moun- 
tains across the desert towards the Pacific. 

You come through those upper tunnels still higher. 
Below, no longer lie the plains, but seas of clouds; 
and it is to the everlasting credit of the sense and taste 
of Denver people, that they have dotted the outer 
margin of this rock wall with slab and log and shingle 
cottages, built literally on the very backbone of the 
continent overlooking such a stretch of cloud and 
mountain and plain as I do not know of elsewhere 
in the whole world. In Sundance Caiion, South 
Dakota, summer people have built in the bottom of 
the gorge. Here, they are dwellers in the sky. 
Rugged pines cling to the cliff edge blasted and bare 
and wind torn; but dauntlessly rooted in the everlast- 
ing rocks. Little mining hamlets composed of match- 
box houses cling to the face of the precipice like card- 
boards stuck on a nail. Then, you have passed 
through the clouds, and are above timber line; and a 
lake lies below you like a pool of pure turquoise; and 
you twist round the flank of the great mountain, and 
there is a pair of green lakes below you — emerald 
jewels pendant from the neck of the old mountain 
god; and with a bump and a rattle of the wheels, 
clear over the top of the Continental Divide you 
go — believe me, a greater conquest than any Napo- 
leon's march to Moscow, or Alva's shambles of head- 
less victims in the Netherlands. 

You take lunch in a snow shed on the very crest of 



1 6 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

the Continental Divide. I wish you could taste the 
air. It isn't air. It's champagne. It isn't cham- 
pagne, it's the very elixir of life. There can never 
be any shadows here; for there is nothing to cast the 
shadow. Nightfall must wrap the world here in a 
mantle of rest, in a vespers of worship and quiet, 
in a crystal of dying chrysoprase above the green 
enameled lake and the forests below, looking like 
moss, and the pearl clouds, a sea of fire in the sunset, 
and the plain — there are no more plains — this is 
the top of the world ! 

Yet it is not always a vesper quiet in the high 
places. When I came back this way a week later, 
such a blizzard was raging as I have never seen in 
Manitoba or Alberta. The high spear grass tossed 
before it like the waves of a sea; and the blasted 
pines on the cliffs below — you knew why their roots 
had taken such grip of the rocks like strong natures 
in disaster. The storm might break them. It could 
not bend them, nor wrench them from their roots. 
The telegraph wires, for reasons that need not be told 
are laid flat on the ground up here. 

When you cross the Divide, you enter the National 
Forests. National Forests above tree line? To be 
surel These deep, coarse upper grasses provide 
ideal pasturage for sheep from June to September; 
and the National Forests administer the grazing 
lands for the general use of all the public, instead of 
permitting them to be monopolized by the big 
rancher, who promptly drove the weaker man off by 
cutting the throats of intruding flocks and herds. 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 17 

Then, the train is literally racing down hill — with 
the trucks bumping heels like the wheels of a wagon 
on a sluggish team; and a new tang comes to the 
ozone — the tang of resin, of healing balsam, of cin- 
namon smells, of incense and frankincense and myrrh, 
of spiced sunbeams and imprisoned fragrance — the 
fragrance of thousands upon thousands of years of 
dew and light, of pollen dust and ripe fruit cones; 
the attar, not of Persian roses, but of the everlasting 
pines. 

The train takes a swift swirl round an escarpment 
of the mountain; and you are in the Forests proper, 
serried rank upon rank of the blue spruce and the 
lodgepole pine. No longer spangles of light hitting 
back from the rocks in sparks of fire! The light 
here is sifted pollen dust — pollen dust, the pri- 
mordial life principle of the tree — with the purple, 
cinnamon-scented cones hanging from the green arms 
of the conifers like the chevrons of an enranked 
army; and the cones tell you somewhat of the service 
as the chevrons do of the soldier man. Some coni- 
fers hold their cones for a year before they send the 
seed, whirling, swirling, broadside to the wind, aviat- 
ing pixy parachutes, airy armaments for the conquest 
of arid hills to new forest growth, though the process 
may take the trifling aeon of a thousand years or so. 
At one season, when you come to the Forests, the air 
is full of the yellow pollen of the conifers, gold dust 
whose alchemy, could we but know it, would unlock 
the secrets of life. At another season — the season 
when I happened to be in the Colorado Forests — the 



1 8 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

very atmosphere Is alive with these forest airships, 
conifer seeds sailing broadside to the wind. You 
know why they sail broadside, don't you? If they 
dropped plumb like a stone, the ground would be 
seeded below the heavily shaded branches Inches deep 
in self-choking, sunless seeds; but when the broadside 
of the sail to the pixy's airship tacks to the veering 
wind, the seed Is carried out and away and far beyond 
the area of the shaded branches; to be caught up by 
other counter currents of wind and hurled, perhaps, 
down the mountain side, destined to forest the naked 
side of a cliff a thousand years hence. It Is a fact, 
too, worth remembering and crediting to the wiles 
and ways of Dame Nature that destruction by fire 
tends but to free these conifer seeds from the cones; 
so that they fall on the bare burn and grow slowly to 
maturity under the protecting nursery of the tremu- 
lous poplars and pulsing cottonwoods. 

The train has not gone very far in the National 
Forests before you see the sleek little Douglas squirrel 
scurrying from branch to branch. From the tremor 
of his tiny body and the angry chitter of his parted 
teeth, you know he Is swearing at you to the utmost 
limit of his squirrel (?) language; but that Is not 
surprising. This little rodent of the evergreens is 
the connoisseur of all conifers. He, and he alone, 
knows the best cones for reproductive seed. No 
wonder he Is so full of fire when you consider he 
diets on the fruit of a thousand years of sunlight and 
dew; so when the ranger seeks seed to reforest the 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 19 

burned or scant slopes, he rifles the cache of this little 
furred forester, who suspects your noisy trainload 
of robbery — robbery — sc — scur — r — there I 

Then, the train bumps and jars to a stop with a 
groaning of brakes on the steep down grade, for a 
drink at the red water tank; and you drop off the 
high car steps with a glance forward to see that the 
baggage man is dropping off your kit. The brakes 
reverse. With a scrunch, the train is off again, 
racing down hill, a blur of steamy vapor like a cloud 
against the lower hills. Before the rear car has dis- 
appeared round the curve, you have been accosted 
by a young man in Norfolk suit of sage green wearing 
a medal stamped with a pine tree — the ranger, 
absurdly young when you consider each ranger 
patrols and polices 100,000 acres compared to the 
1,700 which French and German wardens patrol and 
daily deals with criminal problems ten times more 
difficult than those confronting the Northwest 
Mounted Police, without the military authority which 
backs that body of men. 

You have mounted your pony — men and women 
alike ride astride in the Western States. It heads of 
its own accord up the bridle trail to the ranger's 
house, in this case 9,000 feet above sea level, 1,000 
feet above ordinary cloud line. The hammer of a 
woodpecker, the scur of a rasping blue jay, the 
twitter of some red bills, the soft thug of the unshod 
broncho over the trail of forest mold, no other sound 
unless the soul of the sea from the wind harping in 
the trees. Better than the jangle of city cars in that 



20 THE NATIONAL FORESTS 

stuffy hotel room of the germ-Infested town, isn't 
it? 

If there is snow on the peaks above, you feel it in 
the cool sting of the air. You hear it in the trebling 
laughter, in the trills and rills of the brook babbling 
down, sound softened by the moss as all sounds are 
hushed and low keyed in this woodland world. And 
all the time, you have the most absurd sense of being 
set free from something. By-and-by when eye and 
ear are attuned, you will see the light reflected from 
the pine needles glistening like metal, and hear the 
click of the same needles like fairy castanets of joy. 
Meantime, take a long, deep, full breath of these 
condensed sunbeams spiced with the incense of the 
primeval woods ; for you are entering a temple, the 
temple where our forefathers made offerings to the 
gods of old, the temple which our modern churches 
imitate in Gothic spire and arch and architrave and 
nave. Drink deep in open, full lungs; for you are 
drinking of an elixir of life which no apothecary can 
mix. Most of us are a bit ill mentally and physically 
from breathing the dusty street sweepings of filth and 
germs which permeate the hived towns. They will 
not stay with you here ! Other dust is in this air, the 
gold dust of sunlight and resin and ozone. They 
will make you over, will these forest gods, if you 
will let them, if you will lave in their sunlight, and 
breathe their healing, and laugh with the chitter and 
laughter of the squirrels and streams. 

And what if your spirit does not go out to meet the 
spirit of the woods halfway? Then, the woods will 



THE NATIONAL FORESTS 21 

close round you with a chill loneliness unutterable. 
You are an alien and an exile. They will have none 
of you and will reveal to you none of their joyous, 
dauntless life secrets. 



CHAPTER II 

AMONG THE NATIONAL FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

YOU have not ridden far towards the ranger's 
house In the Forest before you become aware 
that clothing for town Is not clothing for the 
wilds. No matter how hot It may be at mid-day, In 
this high, rare air a chill comes soon as the sun begins 
to sink. To be comfortable, light flannels must be 
worn next the skin, with an extra heavy coat avail- 
able — never farther away from yourself than the 
pack straps. Night may overtake you on a hard 
trail. Long as you have an extra heavy coat and a 
box of matches, night does not matter. You are safer 
benighted In the wilds than in New York or Chicago. 
If you have camp fire and blanket, night in the wilds 
knows nothing of the satyr-faced spirit of evil, sand- 
bagger and yeggman, that stalks the town. 

To anyone used to travel in the wilderness, it seems 
almost like little boys playing Robinson Crusoe to 
give explicit directions as to dress. Yet only a few 
years ago, the world was shocked and horrified by the 
death of a town man exploring the wilds; and that 
death was directly traceable to a simple matter of 
boots. His feet played out. He had gone into a 
country of rocky portages with only one pair of moc- 
casins. I have never gone into the wilds for longer 

22 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 23 

than four months at a time. Yet I have never gone 
with less than four sets of footgear. Primarily, you 
need a pair of good outing boots ; and outing boots are 
good only when they combine two qualities — comfort 
and thick enough soles to protect your feet from sharp 
rock edges if you climb, broad enough soles, too, to 
protect the edge of your feet from hard knocks from 
passing trees and jars in the stirrup. For the rest, 
you need about two extras in case you chip chunks out 
of these in climbing; and if you camp near glaciers or 
snow fields, a pair of moccasins for night wear will 
add to comfort. You may get them if you like to 
spend the money — $8 leggings and $8 horsehide 
shoes and cowboy hat and belted corduroy suit and 
all the other paraphernalia by which the seasoned 
Westerner recognizes the tenderfoot. You may get 
them if you want to. It will not hurt you; but a $3 
cowboy slicker for rainy days and a pair of boots 
guaranteed to let the water out as fast as it comes in, 
these and the ordinary outing garments of any other 
part of the world are the prime essentials. 

This matter of proper preparation recalls a little 
English woman who determined to train her boys and 
girls to be resourceful and independent by taking 
them camping each summer In the forests of the 
Pacific Coast. They were on a tramp one day twelve 
miles from camp when a heavy fog blew in, and they 
lost themselves. That is not surprising when you 
consider the big tree country. Two notches and one 
blaze mark the bounds of the National Forests ; one 
notch and one blaze, the trail ; but they had gone off 



24 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

the trail trout fishing. "If they had been good path- 
finders, they could have found the way out by fol- 
lowing the stream down, " remarked a critic of this 
little group to me; and a very apt criticism it was 
from the safe vantage point of a study chair. How 
about it, if when you came to follow the stream down, 
it chanced to cut through a gorge you couldn't follow, 
with such a sheer fall of rock at the sides and such a 
crisscross of big trees, house-high, that you were 
driven back from the stream a mile or two? You 
would keep your directions by sunlight? Maybe; 
but that big tree region is almost impervious to sun- 
light; and when the fog blows in or the clouds blow 
down thick as wool, you will need a pocket compass 
to keep the faintest sense of direction. Compass 
signs of forest-lore fail here. There are few flowers 
under the dense roofing to give you sense of east or 
west; and you look in vain for the moss sign on the 
north bark of the tree. All four sides are heavily 
mossed; and where the little Englishwoman lost her- 
self, they were in ferns to their necks. 

" Weren't the kiddies afraid? " I asked. 

"Not a bit! Bob got the trout ready; and Son 
made a big fire. We curled ourselves up round it for 
the night; and I wish you could have seen the chil- 
dren's delight when the clouds began to roll up below 
in the morning. It was like a sea. The youngsters 
had never seen clouds take fire from the sun coming 
up below. I want to tell you, too, that we put out 
every spark of that fire before we left in the morn- 
ing." 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 25 

All of which conveys its own moral for the camper 
in the National Forests. 

It ought not to be necessary to say that you cannot 
go to the National Forests expecting to billet yourself 
at the ranger's house. Many of the rangers are 
married and have a houseful of their own. Those 
not married, have no facilities whatever for taking 
care of you. In my visit to the Vasquez Forest, I 
happened to have a letter of introduction to the 
ranger and his mother, who took me in with that 
bountiful hospitality characteristic of the frontier; but 
directly across the road from the ranger's cabin was 
a little log slab-sided hotel where any comer could 
l>ave stayed in perfect comfort for $7 a week; and 
at the station, where the train stopped, was another 
very excellent little hotel where you could have stayed 
and enjoyed meals that for nutritious cooking might 
put a New York dinner to shame — all to the tune 
of $10 a week. Also, at this very station, is the 
Supervisor's office of the Forestry Department. By 
inquiry here, the newcomer can ascertain all facts as 
to tenting oufit and camping place. Only one point 
must be kept in mind — do not go into the National 
Forests expecting the railroads, or the rangers, or 
Providence, to look after you. Do not go unless 
you are prepared to look after yourself. 

And now that you are in the National Forests, 
what are you going to do? You can ride ; or you can 
hunt; or you can fish; or you can bathe in the hot 
springs that dot so many of these intermountain 
regions, where God has landscaped the playground 



26 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

for a nation; or you can go in for records mountain 
climbing; or you can go sightseeing in the most mar- 
velously beautiful mountain scenery in the whole 
world; or you can prowl round the prehistoric cave 
and cliff dwellings of a race who flourished in mighty 
power, now solitary and silent cities, contemporane- 
ous with that Egyptian desert runner whose skeleton 
lies in the British Museum marked 20,000 B. C. It 
isn't every day you can wander through the deserted 
chambers of a king's palace with 500 rooms. Tour- 
ist agencies organize excursion parties for lesser and 
younger palaces in Europe. I haven't heard of any 
to visit the silent cities of the cliff and cave dwellers 
on the Jemez Plateau of New Mexico, or the Gila 
River, Arizona, or even the easily accessible dead 
cities of forgotten peoples In the National Forest of 
Southern Colorado. What race movement in the 
first place sent these races perching their wonderful 
tier-on-tier houses literally on the tip-top of the 
world? 

The prehistoric remains of the Southwest are now, 
of course, under the jurisdiction of the Forestry De- 
partment; and you can't go digging and delving and 
carrying relics from the midden heaps and baked 
earthen floors without the permission of the Secretary 
of Agriculture; but If you go In the spirit of an in- 
vestigator, you will get that permission. 

The question isn't what is there to do. It is 
which of the countless things there are to do are you 
going to choose to do? When Mr. Roosevelt goes 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 27 

to the National Forests, he strikes for the Holy Cross 
Mountain and bags a grizzly. When ordinary folk 
hie to this Forest, they take along a bathing suit and 
indulge in a daily plunge in the hot pools at Glenwood 
Springs. If the light is good and the season yet 
early, you can still see the snow in the crevices of the 
peak, giving the Forest its name of the Holy Cross. 
People say there is no historic association to our 
West. Once a foolish phrase is uttered, it is surpris- 
ing how sensible people will go on repeating it. 
Take this matter of the " Holy Cross " name. If 
you go investigating how these " Holy Cross " peaks 
got their names from old Spanish padres riding their 
burros into the wilderness, it will take you a hard 
year's reading just to master the Spanish legends 
alone. Then, if you dive into the realm of the clifF 
dwellers, you will be drowned in historic antiquity 
before you know. In the Glenwood Springs region, 
you will not find the remnants of prehistoric people; 
but you'll find the hot springs. 

Just two warnings: one as to hunting; the other, as 
to mountain climbing. There is still big game In 
Colorado Forests — bear, mountain sheep, elk, deer; 
and the ranger is supposed to be a game warden; but 
a man patrolling 100,000 acres can't be all over at 
one time. As to mountain climbing, you can get your 
fill of it in Grand Canon, above Ouray, at Pike's 
Peak — a dozen places, and only the mountain 
climber and his troglodyte cliff-climbing prototype 
know the drunken, frenzied joy of climbing on the 
roof of the earth and risking life and limb to stand 



28 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

with the kingdoms of the world at your feet. But 
unless you are a trained climber, take a guide with 
you, or the advice of some local man who knows the 
tricks and the moods and the wiles and the ways of 
the upper mountain world. Looking from the valley 
up to the peak, a patch of snow may seem no bigger 
to you than a good-sized table-cloth. Lookout! If 
it is steep beneath that " table-cloth " and the forest 
shows a slope clean-swept of trees as by a mighty 
broom, be careful how you cross and recross following 
the zigzag trail that corkscrews up below the far 
patch of white ! I was crossing the Continental 
Divide one summer in the West when a woman on 
the train pointed to a patch of white about ten miles 
up the mountain slope and asked if " that " were 
" rock or snow." I told her it was a very large snow 
field, indeed; that we saw only the forefoot of it hang- 
ing over the edge; that the upper part was supposed 
to be some twenty miles across. She gave me a look 
meant for Mrs. Ananias. A month later, when I 
came back that way, the train suddenly slowed up. 
The slide had come down and lay in white heaps 
across the track three or four miles down into the 
valley and up the other side. The tracks were safe 
enough; for the snow shed threw the slide over the 
track on down the slope; but It had caught a cluster 
of lumbermen's shacks and buried eight people in a 
sudden and eternal sleep. " We saw it coming," said 
one of the survivors, " and we thought we had plenty 
of time. It must have been ten miles away. One 
of the men went in to get his wife. Before he could 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 29 

come out, it was on us. Man and wife and child were 
carried down in the house just as it stood without 
crushing a timber. It must have been the concussion 
of the air — they weren't even bruised when we dug 
them out; but the kid couldn't even have wakened up 
where it lay in the bed; and the man hadn't reached 
the inside room; but they were dead, all three." 

And near Ouray another summer, a chance acquaint- 
ance pointed to a peak. " That one caught my son 
last June," he said. " He was the company's doc- 
tor. He had been born and raised in these moun- 
tains; but It caught him. We knew the June heat 
had loosened those upper fields; and his wife didn't 
want him to go; but there was a man sick back up 
the mountain; and he set out. They saw it coming; 
but it wasn't any use. It came — quick — " with a 
snap of his fingers — " as that; and he was gone." 

It's a saying among all good mountaineers that it's 
" only the fool who monkeys with a mountain," es- 
pecially the mountain with a white patch above a 
clean-swept slope. 

And there is another thing for the holiday player In 
the National Forests to do; and it Is the thing that I 
like best to do. You have been told so often that 
you have come to believe it — that our mountains In 
America lack the human interests ; lack the picturesque 
character and race types dotting the Alps, for instance. 
Don't you believe it! Go West! There Isn't a 
mountain or a forest from New Mexico to Idaho that 
has not Its mountaineering votary, Its quaint hermit, 
or its sky-top guide. Its refugee from civilization, or 



30 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

simply its lover of God's Great Outdoors and Peace 
and Big Silence, living near to the God of the Great 
Open as log cabin on a hilltop capped by the stars can 
bring him. Wild creatures of woodland ways don't 
come to your beck and call. You have to hunt out 
their secret haunts. The same with these Western 
mountaineers. Hunt them out ; but do it with rever- 
ence ! I was driving in the Gunnison country with a 
local magnate two years ago. We saw against the 
far skyline a cleft like the arched entrance to a cave; 
only this arch led through the rock to the sky beyond. 

" I wish," said my guide, " you had time to spend 
two or three weeks here. We'd take you to the high 
country above these battlements and palisades. See 
that hole in the mountain?" 

" Rough Upper Alpine meadows? " I asked. 

" Oh, dear no ! Open park country with lakes and 
the best of fishing. It used to be an almost impossi- 
ble trail to get up there; but there has been a hermit 
fellow there for the last ten years, living in his cabin 
and hunting; and year after year, never paid by any- 
body, he has been building that trail up. When men 
ask him why he does it, he says it's to lead people up; 
for the glory of God and that sort of thing. Of 
course, the people in the valley think him crazy." 

Of course, they do. What would we, who love the 
valley and its dust and its maniacal jabber of jealousies 
and dollars do, building trails to lead people up to 
see the Glory of God? We call those hill-crest dwell- 
ers the troglodytes. Is it not we, who are the earth 
dwellers, the dust eaters, the insects of the city ant 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 31 

heaps, the true troglodytes and subsollers of the sordid 
iniquities ? Perhaps, by this, you think there are some 
things to do if you go out to the National Forests. 

You have been told so often that the National For- 
ests lock up timber from use that It comes as a 
surprise as you ride up the woodland trail to hear the 
song of the crosscut saw and the buzzing hum of a 
mill — perhaps a dozen mills — running full blast 
here In this National Forest. Heaps of sawdust emit 
the odors of Imprisoned flowers. Piles of logs lie on 
all sides stamped at the end U. S. — timber sold on the 
stump to any lumberman and scaled as inspected by 
the ranger and paid by the buyer. To be sure, the 
lumberman cannot have the lumber for nothing; and 
It was for nothing that the Forests were seized and 
cut under the old regime. 

How was the spoliation effected? Two or three 
ways. The law of the public domain used to permit 
burn and windfall to be taken out free. Your lum- 
berman, then, homesteaded 160 acres on a slope of 
forest affording good timber skids and chutes. So 
far, no wrong! Was not public domain open to 
homesteading? Good; but your homesteading lum- 
berman now watched his chance for a high wind away 
from his claim. Then, purely accidentally, you under- 
stand, the fire sprang up and swept the entire slope 
of green forest away from his claim. Your home- 
steading lumberman then set up a sawmill. A fire 
fanned up a green slope by a high wind did less harm 
than fire In a slow wind In dry weather. The slope 



32 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

would be left a sweep of desolate burn and windfall, 
dead trees and spars. Your lumberman then went In 
and took his windfall and his burn free. Thousands, 
hundreds of thousands, millions of acres of the public 
domain, were rifled free from the public in this way. 
If challenged, I could give the names of men who be- 
came millionaires by lumbering In this manner. 

That was the principle of Congress when It with- 
drew from public domain these vast wooded areas and 
created the National Forests to include grazing and 
woodland not properly administered under public do- 
main. The making of windfall to take It free was 
stopped. The ranger's job Is to prevent fires. Also 
he permits the cutting of only ripe, full-grown trees, 
or dead tops, or growth stunted by crowding; and all 
timber sold off the forests must be marked for cut- 
ting and stamped by the ranger. 

But the old spirit assumes protean forms. The 
latest way of working the old trick Is through the 
homestead law. You have been told that homestead- 
ers cannot go in on the National Forests. Yet there, 
as you ride along the trail, Is a cleared space of i6o 
acres where a Swedish woman and her boys are mak- 
ing hay; and Inquiry elicits the fact that millions of 
acres are yearly homesteaded in the National Forests. 
Just as fast as they can be surveyed, all farming lands 
in the National Forests are opened to the home- 
steader. Where, then. Is the trick? Your farmer 
man comes in for a homestead and he picks out i6o 
acres where the growth of big trees Is so dense they 
will yield from $10,000 to $40,000 In timber per 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 33 

quarter section. Good ! Hasn't the homesteader a 
right to this profit? He certainly has, if he gets the 
profit; but supposing he doesn't clear more than a 
few hundred feet round his cabin, and hasn't a cent of 
money to pay the heavy expense of clearing the rest, 
and sells out at the end of his homesteading for a few 
hundred dollars? Supposing such farmer men are 
brought in by excursion loads by a certain big lumber 
company, and all sell out at a few hundred dollars, 
claims worth millions, to that certain big lumber com- 
pany — is this true homesteading of free land; or a 
grabbing of timber for a lumber trust? 

The same spirit explains the furious outcry that 
miners are driven off the National Forest land. 
Wherever there Is genuine metal, prospectors can go 
in and stake their claims and take lumber for their 
preliminary operations; but they cannot stake thou- 
sands of fictitious claims, then yearly turn over a 
quarter of a million dollars' worth of timber free to 
a big smelting trust — a merry game worked in one 
of the Western States for several years till the rang- 
ers put a stop to it. 

To build roads through an empire the size of Ger- 
many would require larger revenues than the Forests 
yet afford; so the experiment is being tried of permit- 
ting lumbermen to take the timber free from the 
space occupied by a road for the building of the road. 
When you consider that you can drive a span of horses 
through the width of a big conifer, or build a cottage 
of six rooms from a single tree, the reward for road 
building Is not so paltry as It sounds. 



34 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

Presently, your pony turns up a by-path. You are 
at the ranger's cabin, — picturesque to a degree, built 
of hewn logs or timbers, with slab sides scraped down 
to the cinnamon brown, nailed on the hewn wood. 
Many an Eastern country house built in elaborate and 
shoddy imitation of town mansion, or prairie home 
resembling nothing in the world so much as an ugly 
packing box, might imitate the architecture of the 
ranger's cabin to the infinite Improvement of appear- 
ances, not to mention appropriateness. 

Appropriateness ! That Is the word. It Is a for- 
est wprld; and the ranger tune« the style of his house 
to the trees around him; log walls, log partitions, log 
veranda, unbarked log fences, rustic seats, fur rugs, 
natural stone for entrance steps. In several cases, 
where the cabin had been built of square hewn timber 
with tar paper lining, slabs scraped of the loose bark 
had been nailed diagonally on the outside; and a more 
suitable finish to a wood hermitage could hardly be 
devised — surely better than the weathered browns 
and dirty drabs and peeling whites that you see 
defacing the average frontier home. Naturally 
enough, city people building cottages as play places 
have been the first to imitate this woodsy architecture. 
You see the slab-sided, cinnamon-barked cottages 
among the city folk who come West to play, and In 
the lodges of hunting clubs far East as the Great 
Lakes. Personally I should like to see the contagion 
spread to the farthest East of city people who are 
fleeing the cares of town, "back to the land;" but 
when there are taken to the country all the cares of 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 35 

the city house, a regiment of servants or hostiles, and 
a mansion of grandeur demanding such care, it seems 
to me the city man is carrying the woes that he flees 
" back to the farm." 

What sort of men are these young fellows living 
halfway between heaven and earth on the lonely for- 
ested ridges whose nearest neighbors are the snow 
peaks? Each, as stated previously, patrols 100,000 
acres. That is, over an area of 100,000 acres he is 
a road warden, game warden, timber cruiser, sales 
agent, United States marshal, forester, gardener, nat- 
uralist, trail builder, fire fighter, cattle boss, sheep 
protector, arrester of thugs, thieves and poachers, sur- 
veyor, mine inspector, field man on homestead jobs 
inside the limits, tree doctor, nurseryman. When 
you consider that each man's patrol stretched out in a 
straight line would reach from New York past Al- 
bany, or from St. Paul to Duluth, without any of the 
inaccuracy with which a specialist loves to charge the 
layman, you may say the ranger is a pretty busy man. 

What sort of man is he? Very much the same 
type as the Canadian Northwest Mounted Policeman, 
with these differences : He is very much younger. I 
think there is a regulation somewhere In the Depart- 
ment that a new man older than forty-five will not be 
taken. This insures enthusiasm, weeding out the mis- 
fits, the formation of a body of men trained to the 
work; but I am not sure that it is not a mistake. 
There is a saying among the men of the North that 
" It takes a wise old dog to catch a wary. old wolf; " 
and " there are more things in the woods than ever 



36 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

taught in I'pe'tee cat — ee — cheesm." I am not sure 
that the weathered old dogs, whose catechism has been 
the woods and the world, with lots of hard knocks, 
are not better fitted to cope with some of the dldicul- 
ties of the ranger's life than a double-barreled post- 
graduate from Yale or Biltmore. So much depends 
on fist, and the brain behind the fist. I am quite sure 
that many of the blackguard tricks assailing the For- 
est Service would slink back to unlighted lairs if the 
tricksters had to deal not with the boys of Eastern 
colleges, gentlemen always, but with some wise and 
weathered old dog of frontier life who wouldn't con- 
sult Departmental regulations before showing his 
fangs. He would consult them, you know; but it 
would be afterwards. Just now, while the rangers 
are consulting the red tape, the trickster gets away 
with the goods. 

In the next place, your Forest ranger Is not clothed 
with the authority to back up his fight which the N.W. 
M.P. man possesses. In theory, your ranger is a 
United States marshal, just as your Mounted Police- 
man Is a constable and justice of the peace; but when 
It comes to practice, where the N.W.M.P. has a free 
hand on the Instant, on the spot, to arrest, try, con- 
vict and Imprison, the Forest ranger Is ham-strung 
and hampered by official red tape. For instance, rid- 
ing out with a ranger one day, we came on an Irate 
mill man who opened out a fusillade In all the pro- 
fanity his tongue could borrow. The ranger turned 
toward me aghast. 

"Don't mind me! Let him swear himself out! 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 37 

I want to see for myself exactly what you men have 
to deal with! " 

Now, if that mill man had used such language to a 
Mounted Policeman, he would have been arrested, 
sentenced to thirty days and a fine, all inside of twen- 
ty-four hours. What was it all about? An attempt 
to bulldoze a young government man into believing 
that the taking of logs without payment was permis- 
sible. 

"What will you do to straighten it all out?" I 
asked. 

" Lay a statement of the facts before the District 
Supervisor. The Supervisor will forward all to Den- 
ver. Denver will communicate with Washington. 
Then, soon as the thing has been investigated, word 
will come back from Washington." 

Investigated? If you know anything about gov- 
ernment investigations, you will not stop the clock, 
as Joshua played tricks with the sun dial, to prevent 
speed. 

" Then, it's a matter of six weeks before you can 
put decency and respect for law in that gentleman's 
heart? " I asked. 

" Perhaps longer," said the college man without a 
suspicion of irony, " and he has given us trouble this 
way ever since he has come to the Forests." 

" And will continue to give you trouble till the law 
gives you a free hand to put such blackguards to bed 
till they learn to be good." 

" Yes, that's right. This isn't the first time men 
have tried to get away with logs that didn't belong 



38 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

to them. Once, when I came back to the first Forest 
where I served, there was a whole pile of logs 
stamped U. S. that we had never scaled. By the 
time we could get word back from Washington, the 
guilty party had left the State and blame had been 
shunted round on a poor half-witted fellow who 
didn't know what he was doing; but we forced pay 
for those logs." 

It is a common saying in the Northwest that it takes 
eight years to make a good Mounted Policeman — 
eight years to jounce the duffer out and the man in; 
but in the Forest Service, men over forty-five are not 
taken. For men who serve up to forty-five, the in- 
ducements of salary beginning at $6^ a month and 
seldom exceeding $200 are not sufficient to retain 
tested veterans. The big lumber companies will pay 
a trained forester more for the same work on pri- 
vately owned timber limits; so the rangers remain 
for the most part young. Would the same difficul- 
ties rise if wise old dogs were on guard? I hardly 
think so. 

What manner of man is the ranger? As we sat 
round the little parlor of the cabin that night in the 
Vasquez Forest, an army man turned forester struck 
up on a piano that had been packed on horseback 
above cloud-line strains of Wagner and Beethoven. 
A graduate of Ann Arbor and post-graduate of Yale 
played with a cigarette as he gazed at his own fancies 
through the mica glow of the coal stove. A Denver 
boy, whose mother kept house in the cabin, was chief 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 39 

ranger. In the group was his sister, a teacher in the 
village school ; and I fancy most of the ranger homes 
present pretty much the same types, though one does 
not ordinarily expect to hear strains of grand opera 
above cloud-line. Picture the men dressed in sage- 
green Norfolk suits; and you have as rare a scene as 
Scott ever painted of the men in Lincoln green in 
England's borderland forests. 

Of course, there are traitors and spies and Judas 
Iscariots in the Service with lip loyalty to public weal 
and one hand out behind for thirty pieces of silver to 
betray self-government; but under the present regime, 
such men are not kept when found out, nor shielded 
when caught. For twenty years, the world has 
been ringing with praise of the Northwest Mounted 
Police; but the red-coat men have served their day; 
and the extension of Provincial Government will prac- 
tically disband the force in a few years. Right now, 
in the American West, is a similar picturesque body 
of frontier fighters and wardens, doing battle against 
ten times greater odds, with little or no authority to 
back them up, and under constant fire of slanderous 
mendacity set going by the thieves and grafters whose 
game of spoliation has been stopped. Let spread- 
eagleism look at the figures and ponder them, and 
never forget them, especially never forget them, 
when charges are being hurled against the Forest 
rangers 1 In the single fire of iQOg 7nore rangers 
lost their lives than Mounted Policemen have died in 
the Service since iS'/o, when the force was organ- 
ized. 



40 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

Was it Nietzsche, or Haeckel, or Maeterlinck, or 
all of them together, who declared that Nature's 
constant aim is to perpetuate and surpass herself? 
The sponge slipping from vegetable to animal king- 
dom; the animal grading up to man; man stretching 
his neck to become — what? — is it spirit, the being 
of a future world? The tadpole striving for legs and 
wings, till in the course of the centuries it developed 
both. The flower flaunting its beauty to attract bee 
and butterfly that it may perfect its union with alien 
pollen dust and so perpetuate a species that shall sur- 
pass itself. The tree trying to encompass and over- 
come the law of its own being — fixity — by sending 
its seeds sailing, whirling, aviating the seas of the 
air, with wind for pilot to far distant clime. 

You see It all of a sun-washed morning in a ride or 
walk through the National Forests. You thought 
the tree was an inanimate thing, didn't you ? Yet you 
find John Muir and Dante clasping hands across the 
centuries in agreement that the tree is a living, sensate 
thing, sensate almost as you are; with its seven ages 
like the seven ages of man; with the same ceaseless 
struggle to survive, to be fit to survive, to battle up to 
light and stand in serried rank proud among its peers, 
drawing life and strength straight from the sun. 

The storm wind ramps through its thrashing 
branches ; and what do you suppose it is doing? Pre- 
cisely what the storm winds of adversity do to you 
and me: blowing down the dead leaves, snapping off 
the dead branches, making us take tighter hold on the 
verities of the eternal rocks, teaching us to anchor on 



THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 41 

facts, not fictions, destroying our weakness, strength- 
ening our flabbiness, making us prove our right to be 
fit to survive. Woe betide the tree with rotten heart 
wood or mushy anchorage ! You see its fate with 
upturned roots still sticky with the useless muck. Not 
so different from us humans with mushy creeds that 
can't stand fast against the shocks of life I 

You say all this is so much symbohsm; but when 
the First Great Cause made the tree as well as the 
man. Is it surprising that the same laws of life should 
govern both? It is the forester, not the symbolist, 
who divides the life of the tree into seven ages; just 
as it is the poet, not the philosopher, who divides the 
life of man in seven ages; and it needs no Maeter- 
linck, or Haeckel, to trace the similarity between the 
seven ages. Seedling, sapling, large sapling, pole, 
large pole, standard and set — marking the ages of 
^e trees — all have their prototypes in the human. 
The seedling can grow only under the protecting nurs- 
ery of earth, air, moisture and in some cases the shade 
oT other trees. The young conifers, for Instance, 
grow best under the protecting nursery of poplars 
and cottonwoods, as one sees where the fire has run, 
and the quick growers are already shading the shy 
evergreens. And there is the same Infant mortality 
among the young trees as In human life. Too much 
shade, fire, drought, passing hoof, disease, blight, 
weeds out the weaklings up to adolescence. Then, 
the real business of living begins — It Is a struggle, 
a race, a constant contention for the top, for the sun- 
light and air and peace at the top; and many a grand 



42 THE FORESTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 

old tree reaches the top only when ripe for death. 
Others live on their three score years and ten, their 
centuries, and in the case of the sugar pines and se- 
quoias, their decades of centuries. First comes the 
self-pruning, the branches shaded by their neighbors 
dying and dropping off. And what a threshing of 
arms, of strength against strength, there is in the 
storm wind, every wrench tightening grip to the rocks, 
some trees even sending down extra roots like guy 
ropes for anchorhold. The tree uncrowded by its 
fellows shoots up straight as a mast pole, whorl on 
whorl of its branches spelling its years in a century 
census. It is the crowded trees that show their al- 
most human craft, their instinct of will to live — 
corkscrewing sidewise for light, forking into two 
branches where one branch is broken or shaded, twist- 
ing and bending, ever seeking the light, and spread- 
ing out only when they reach room for shoulder swing 
at the top, with such a mechanism of pumping ma- 
chinery to hoist barrels of water up from secret 
springs in the earth as man has not devised for his 
own use. And now, when the crown has widened 
out to sun and air, it stops growing and bears its seeds 
— seeds shaped like parachutes and canoes and sails 
and wings, to overcome the law of its own fixity — 
life striving to surpass itself, as the symbolists and the 
scientists say, though symbolist and scientist would 
break each other's heads if you suggested that they 
both preach the very same thing. 

And a lost tree is like a lost life; utter loss, boot- 
less waste. You see it in the bleached skeleton spars 



THE FORESTS OV THE SOUTHWEST 43 

of the dead forest where the burn has run. You see 
it where the wasteful lumberman has come cutting 
half-growns and leaving stumps of full-growns three 
or four feet high with piles of dry slash to carry the 
first chance spark. The leaf litter here would have 
enriched the soil and the waste slash would keep the 
poor of an Eastern city in fuel. Once, at a public 
meeting, I happened to mention the ranger's rule that 
stumps must be cut no higher than eighteen inches, and 
the fact that in the big tree region of the Rocky 
Mountains many stumps are left three and four feet 
high. Someone took smiling exception to the height 
of those stumps. Yet in the redwood and Douglas 
fir country stumps are cut, not four feet, but nine feet 
high, leaving waste enough to build a small house 
And it will take not a hundred, not two hundred, but 
a thousand years, to bring up a second growth of such 
trees. 

Sitting down to dinner at a little mountain inn, I 
noticed only two families besides ourselves; and they 
were residents of the mountain. I thought of those 
hotels back in the cities daily turning away health 
seekers. 

" How is it you haven't more people here, when 
the cities can't take care of all the people who come? " 
I asked the woman of the house. 

" People don't seem to know about the National 
Forests," she said. " They think the forests are 
only places for lumber and mills." 



CHAPTER III 

THROUGH THE PECOS NATIONAL FORESTS OF NEW 
MEXICO 

THE ordinary Easterner's Idea of New Mexico 
is of a cloudless, sun-scorched land where 
you can cook an egg by laying it on the sand 
any day In the year, winter or summer. Yet when I 
went Into the Pecos National Forest, I put on the 
heaviest flannels I have ever worn In northernmost 
Canada and found them Inadequate. We were 
blocked by four feet of snow on the trail; and one 
morning I had to break the ice In my bedroom pitcher 
to get washing water. To be sure. It is hot enough In 
New Mexico at all seasons of the year; and you can 
cook that egg all right if you keep down on the desert 
sands of the southern lowlands and mesas; but New 
Mexico Isn't all scorched lowlands and burnt-up mesas. 
You'll find your egg in cold storage If you go into the 
different National Forests, for most of them lie above 
an altitude of 8,000 feet; and at the headwaters of 
the Pecos, you are between 10,000 and 13,000 feet 
high, according as you camp on Baldy Pecos, or the 
Truchas, or Grass Mountain, or In Horse-Thief 
Canon. 

There are several other ways In which the Na- 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 45 

tlonal Forests of New Mexico discount Eastern ex- 
pectation. 

First of all, they are cheap; and that is not true of 
the majority of trips through the West. Ordinarily, 
It costs more to take a trip to the wilds of the West 
than to go to Europe. What with enormous dis- 
tances to be traversed and extortionate hotel charges. 
It is much cheaper to go to Paris than to San Fran- 
cisco; but this Is not true of the Forests of New Mex- 
ico. Prices have not yet been jacked up to " all the 
traffic will stand." The constant half-hour leak of 
tips at every turn Is unknown. If you gave a tip to 
any of the ranch people who take care of you in the 
National Forests of Mexico, the chances are they 
would hand it back, leaving you a good deal smaller 
than you feel when you run the gauntlet of forty 
servitors lined up in a Continental hotel for tips. In 
letters of gold, let it be written across the face of the 
heavens — There is still a no-tip land. As prices 
rule to-day In New Mexico, you can literally take a 
holiday cheaper In the National Forests than you can 
stay at home. Once you have reached the getting 
off place from the transcontinental railroad, it will cost 
you to go into the Forests $4 an hour by motor, and 
the roads are good enough to make a long trip fast. 
In fact, you can set down the cost of going in and out 
at not less than $2, nor more than $4. If you hire 
a team to go In, It will not cost you more than $4 
a day, including driver, driver's meals and horse feed. 
Or you may still buy a pony in New Mexico at from 
$35 to $60, and so have your own horse for a six 



46 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

weeks' holiday. To rent a horse by the month would 
probably not cost $20. Set your going in charges 
down at $2 — where will you go? All through the 
National Forests of New Mexico are ranch houses, 
usually old Mexican establishments taken over and 
modernized, where you can board at from $8 to $10 
a week. Don't picture to yourself an adobe dwelling 
with a wash basin at the back door and a roller towel 
that has been too popular; that day has been long 
passed in the ranches of New Mexico. The chances 
are the adobe has been whitewashed, and your room 
will look out either on the little courtyard in the cen- 
ter, or from the piazza outside down the valleys; and 
somewhere along the courtyard or piazza facing the 
valley will be a modern bathroom with hot and cold 
water. The dining-room and living-room will be 
after the style of the old Franciscan Mission archi- 
tecture that dominates all the architecture of the 
Southwest — conical arches opening from one room 
into another, shut off, perhaps, by a wicket gate. 
Many of the ranch houses are flanked by dozens of 
little portable, one-roomed bungalows, tar-paper roof, 
shingle wainscot, and either white tenting or mosquito 
wire halfway up; and this is by all odds the best type 
of room for the health seeker who goes to New Mex- 
ico. He endangers neither himself nor others by 
housing close to neighbors. In fact, the number of 
health seekers living in such little portable boxes has 
become so great in New Mexico that they are locally 
known as " tent-dwellers." It need scarcely be said 
that there are dozens and dozens of ranch houses that 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 47 

will not take tuberculous patients; so there Is no dan- 
ger to ordinary comers seeking a holiday In the Na- 
tional Forests. On the other hand, there Is no hard- 
ship worked on the Invalid. For a sum varying from 
$50 to $100, he can buy his own ready-made, portable 
house; and arrangements can easily be made for send- 
ing In meals. 

The next surprise about the National Forests of 
New Mexico Is the excellence of roads and trails. 
You can go Into the very heart of most of the Forests 
by motor, of all of the Forests by team (be sure to 
hire a strong wagon) ; and you can ride almost to the 
last lap of the highest peaks along bridle trails that 
are easy to the veriest beginner. In the Pecos Forest 
are five or six hundred miles of such trails cut by the 
rangers as their patrol route; and New Mexico has 
for some seasons been cutting a graded wagon road 
clear across the ridges of two mountain ranges, a 
great scenic highway from Santa Fe to Las Vegas, 
from eight to ten thousand feet above sea level. One 
of the most marvelous roads in the world It will be 
when It Is finished, skirting inaccessible canons, shy 
Alpine lakes and the eternal snows all through such 
a forest of huge mast pole yellow pine as might be 
the park domain of some old baronial lord on the 
Rhine. This road Is now built halfway from each 
end. It Is not clear of snow at the highest points 
till well on to the end of May; but you can enter the 
Pecos at any season at right angles to this road, go- 
ing up the canon from south to north. 

The great surprise In the National Forests of New 



48 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

Mexico is the great plenitude of game; and I suppose 
the Pecos of New Mexico and the White Mountains 
of Arizona are the only sections of America of which 
this can still be said. In two hours, you can pull out 
of the Pecos more trout than your entire camp can 
eat in two days. Wild turkey and quail still abound. 
Mountain lion and wildcat are still so frequent that 
they constitute a peril to the deer, and the Forest 
Service actually needs hunters to clear them out for 
preservation of the turkey and deer. As for bear, 
as many as eight have been trapped in three weeks 
on the Sangre de Christo Range. In one of the 
canons forking off the Pecos at right angles, twenty- 
six were trapped and shot in three months. 

Lastly, the mountain canons of New Mexico are 
second in grandeur to none in the world. People here 
have not caught the climbing mania yet; that will 
come. But there are snow peaks of 13,500 feet yet 
awaiting the conqueror, and the scenery of the Upper 
Pecos might be a section of the Alps or Canadian 
Rockies set bodily down in New Mexico. And please 
to remember — with all these advantages, cheapness, 
good accommodation, excellent trails and abundance 
of game — these National Forests of New Mexico 
are only one day from Kansas City, only two days 
from Chicago, only sixty hours from New York or 
Washington, which seems to prove that the National 
Forests are as much a possession to the East as to the 
West. 

You can strike into the Pecos in one of three ways : 
by Santa Fe, by Las Vegas, or by Glorieta, all on the 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 49 

main line of the railroad. I entered by way of Glori- 
eta because snow still packed the upper portions of the 
scenic highway from Santa Fe and Las Vegas. As 
the train pants up over the arid hills, 6,000, 7,000, 
7,500 feet, you would never guess that just behind 
these knolls of scrub pine and juniper, the foothills 
rolling back to the mountains, whose snow peaks you 
can see on the blue horizon, present a heavy growth 
of park-like yellow pine forests — trees eighty to 
150 feet high, straight as a mast, clear of under- 
branching and underbrush, interspersed with cedar and 
juniper and Engelmann spruce. Ten years ago, be- 
fore the Pecos was taken in the National Forests, 
goats and sheep ate these young pine seedlings down 
to the ground; but of late, herds have been permitted 
only where the seedlings have made headway enough 
to resist trampling, and thousands of acres are grow- 
ing up to seedling yellow pines as regular and thrifty 
as if set out by nurserymen. In all, the Pecos Forest 
includes some 750,000 acres; and in addition to nat- 
ural seeding, the Forest men are yearly harrowing in 
five or six hundred acres of yellow pine; so that in 
twenty-five years this Forest is likely to be more 
densely wooded than in its primeval state. 

The train dumps you off at Glorieta, a little adobe 
Mexican town hedged in by the arid foothills, with 
ten-acre farm patches along the valley stream, of won- 
derfully rich soil, every acre under the ditch, a home- 
made system of irrigation which dates back to Indian 
days when the Spanish first came in the fifteen hun- 
dreds and found the same little checkerboard farm 



50 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

patches under the same primitive ditch system. A 
glance tells you that nearly all these peon farms are 
goat ranches. The goats scrabble up over the hills; 
and on the valley fields the farmer raises corn and 
oats enough to support his family and his stock. We, 
in the East, who pay from $175 to $250 for a horse, 
and twenty to thirty cents a pound for our meat, open 
our eyes wide with wonder when we learn that horses 
can still be bought here for from $35 to $60 and meat 
at $2 a sheep. To be sure, this means that the peon 
Mexican farmer does not wax opulent, but he does not 
want to wax opulent; $40 or $100 a year keeps him 
better than $400 or $1,000 would keep you; and a 
happier looking lot of people you never saw than 
these swarthy descendants of old Spain still plowing 
with single horse wooden plows, with nothing better 
for a barn than a few sticks stuck up with a wattle 
roof. 

Then suddenly, it dawns on you — this is not Amer- 
ica at all. It is a bit of old Spain picked up three 
centuries ago and set down here in the wilderness of 
New Mexico, with a sprinkling of outsiders seeking 
health, and a sprinkling of nondescripts seeking doors 
in and out of mischief. The children in bright red 
and blue prints playing out squat in the fresh-plowed 
furrows, the women with red shawls over heads, 
brighter skirts tucked up, sprawling round the adobe 
house doorways, the goats bleating on the red sand 
hills — all complete the illusion that you have waked 
up in some picturesque nook of old Spain. What 
Quebec is to Canada, New Mexico is to the United 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 51 

States — a mosaic in color ; a bit of the Old World 
set down In the New; a relic of the historic and the 
picturesque not yet sandpapered Into the common- 
place by the friction of progress and democracy. I 
confess I am glad of It. I am glad there are still two 
nooks In America where simple folk are happy just to 
be alive, undisturbed by the " over-weaning ambition 
that over-vaulteth itself " and falls back In social envy 
and class hate. " Our people, no, they are not am- 
blsh! " said an old Mexican to me. " Dey do not 
wish wealfth — no — we have dis," pointing to all 
his own earthly belongings in the little whitewashed 
adobe room, " and now I will read you a little poem 
I make on de snow mountains. Hah! Iss not dIs 
good? " 

" Mighty good," though I was not thinking of the 
poem. I was thinking of the spirit that is contented 
enough to see poetry in the great white mountains 
through the door of a little whitewashed adobe room; 
and in this case, it was a sick room. Presently, he 
got up out of his bed, and donned an old military 
cape, and came out in the sunlight to have me photo- 
graph him, so that his friends would have it after. 

Having reached Glorleta, you have decided which 
of the many ranch houses in the Pecos Forest you will 
stay at; or If you have not decided, a few words of 
inquiry with the station agent or a Forest Service man 
will put you wise; and you telephone in for rig or 
motor to come out for you. Any normal traveler 
does not need to be told that these ranch houses are 



52 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

not regular boarding houses as you understand that 
term; but as a great many travelers are not normal, 
perhaps I should explain. The custom of taking 
strangers has arisen from those old days when there 
were no inns and all passers-by were given beds and 
meals as a matter of course. Those days are past, 
but luckily for outsiders, the custom survives ; only re- 
member while you pay, you go as a guest, and must 
not expect a valet to clean your boots and to quake at 
any discord of nerves untuned by the jar of town. 

In half an hour after leaving the transcontinental 
train, we were spinning out by motor to the well- 
known Harrison Ranch, the rolling, earth-baked hills 
gradually rising, the forest growth thickening, the lit- 
tle checkerboard farms taking on more and more the 
appearance of settlement than on the desert which 
the railroads traverse. Presently, at an elevation of 
8,000 feet; we pulled up in Pecos Town before the 
long, low, whitewashed ranch house, the two ends 
coming back in an L round the court, the main en- 
trance on the other side of it. You expected to find 
wilderness. Well, there is an upright piano, and 
there is a gramophone with latest musical records, 
and close by the davenport where hangs a grizzly bear 
pelt, stands a banjo. You have scarcely got travel 
togs off before dinner is sounded by the big copper 
ranch bell hung on the piazza after the fashion of 
the Missions. 

After dinner, you go over to the Supervisor's office 
for advice on going up the canon. Technically, this 
is not necessary ; but it is wise for a great many rea- 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 53 

sons. He will tell you where to get, and what to pay 
for, your camp outfit; where to go and how to go. 
tic will show you a map with the leading trails and 
advise you as to the next stopping place. To hunt 
predatory animals -bear and wolf and cat and 
mountain lion— you need no permit; but If you are 
an outsider, you need one to get trout and turkey and 
deer. Another point: are you aware that you are 
going into a country as large as two or three of the 
ij^astern States put together; and that the forests In 
the upper canons are very dense; and that you might 
get lost; and that It Is a good thing to leave some- 
body on the outside edge who knows where you have 
gone ? ^ 

^ On my way back from the Supervisor's office, the 
sick man called me in and told me his life story and 
showed me his poem. As he Is a Mexican, has been 
a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and is 
somewhat of a politician. It may be worth while set- 
ting down his views. 
^ "What is going to happen In Old Mexico ? " 
Ah, only one t'Ing possible — los Americanos must 
go in. 

"Why?" 

"Well,'' with a shrug, "Diaz cannot - cannot 
control. Madero, he cannot control better dan Diaz 
J-os Americanos must go In." 

It is a bit of a surprise to find In this little Pecos 
1 own of adobe huts set down higgledy-piggledy a tiny 
stone church with stained glass windows, a little gem 
in a wilderness. I slipped through the doors and sat 



54 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

watching the sunset through the colored windows and 
dreaming of the devotees whose ideals had been built 
into the stones of these quiet walls. 

Three miles lower down the valley is a still older 
church built in — well, they tell you all the way from 
1548 and 1600 to 1700. I dare say the middle date 
is the nearest right. At all events, the bronze bell 
of this old ruin dated before 1700; and when prepara- 
tions were under way for the Chicago World's Fair, 
these old Mission bells were so much in demand that 
the prices went up to $500; and the Mexicans of Pe- 
cos were so fearful of the desecrating thief that they 
carried this ancient bell away and buried it in the 
mountains — where, no man knows : it has never since 
been found. You have been told so often that the 
mountains of America lack human and historic interest 
that you have almost come to believe it. Does all 
this sound like lack of human interest? Yet it is most 
of it 8,000 feet above sea level, and much of it on the 
top of the snow peaks between ten and thirteen thou- 
sand feet up. 

At eight o'clock Tuesday, April 18, I set out up the 
carion with a span of stout, heavy horses, an excep- 
tionally strong democrat wagon, and a very careful 
Mexican driver. To those who know mountain 
travel, I do not need to- describe the trails up Pecos 
Caiion. I consider it a safer road than Broadway, 
New York, or Piccadilly, London; but people from 
Broadway or Piccadilly might not consider it so. It 
isn't a trail for a motor car, though the scenic high- 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 55 

way cutting this at right angles will be when It is 
finished; and it isn't a trail for a fool. The pedes- 
trian who jumps forward and then back in dodging 
motors on Broadway, might turn several somersaults 
down this trail if trying experiments in the way of 
jumping. The trail is just the width of the wagon, 
and it clings to the mountain side above the brawling 
waters in Pecos Caiion, now down on a level with the 
torrent, now high up edging round ramparts of rock 
sheer as a wall. You load your wagon the heavier 
on the inner side both going and coming; and you sit 
with your weight on the inner side; and the driver 
keeps the brakes pretty well jammed down on sharp 
in-curves and the horses headed close in to the wall. 
With care, there is no danger whatever. Lumber 
teams traverse the road every day. With careless- 
ness — well, last summer a rig and span and four oc- 
cupants went over the edge head first: nobody hurt, 
as the steep slope is heavily wooded and you can't 
slide far. 

Ranch after ranch you pass with the little portable 
houses for " the tent dwellers; " and let it be empha- 
sized that well folk must be careful how they go into 
quarters which tuberculous patients have had. Carry 
your own collapsible drinking cup. Cabins and camps 
of city people from Texas, from the Pacific Coast, 
from Europe, dot the level knolls where the big pines 
stand like sentinels, and the rocks shade from wind 
and heat, and the eddying brook encircles natural lawn 
in trout pools and miniature waterfalls. Wherever 
the canon widens to little fields, the Mexican farmer's 



Se THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

adobe hut stands by the roadside with an intake ditch 
to irrigate the farm. The road corkscrews up and 
up, in and out, round rock flank and rampart and bat- 
tlement, where the canon forks to right and left up 
other forested canons, many of which, save for the 
hunter, have never known human tread. Straight 
ahead north there, as you dodge round the rocky 
abutments crisscrossing the stream at a dozen fords, 
loom walls and domes of snow, Baldy Pecos, a great 
ridge of white, the two Truchas Peaks going up in 
sharp summits. The road is called twenty miles as 
the crow flies; but this is not a trail as the crow flies. 
You are zigzagging back on your own track a dozen 
places; and there is no lie as big as the length of a 
mile in the mountains, especially when the wheels go 
over stones half their own size. Where the snow 
peaks rear their summits is the head of Pecos Caiion 

— a sort of snow top to the sides of a triangle, the 
Santa Fe Range shutting off the left on the west, the 
Las Vegas or Sangre de Christo Mountains walling 
in the right on the east. I know of nothing like it 
for grandeur in America except the Rockies round 
Laggan in Canada. 

I had put on heaviest flannels in the morning; and 
now donned in addition a cowboy slicker and was cold 

— this in a land where the Easterner thinks you can 
sizzle eggs by laying them on the sand. An old Mex- 
ican jumps into the front seat with the driver near a 
deserted mining camp, and the two sing snatches of 
Spanish songs as we ascend the cafion. Promptly at 
twelve, Tomaso turns back and asks me the time. 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 57 

When I say it is dinner, he digs out of his box a paper 
of soda biscuits and asks me to " have a crack." To 
reciprocate that kindness, I loan him my collapsible 
drinking cup to go down to the canon for some water. 
Tomaso's courtesy is not to be outdone. After using, 
he dries that cup off with an ancient bandana, which I 
am quite sure has been used for ten years; but for- 
tunately he does not offer me a drink. 

Winsor's Ranch marks the end of the wagon road 
up the canon. From this point, travel must be on 
foot or horseback; and though the snow peaks seem 
to wall in the north, they are really fifteen miles away 
with a dozen canons heavily forested like fields of 
wheat between you and them. In fact, if you followed 
up any of these side caiions, you would find them, too, 
dotted with ranch houses; but beyond them, upper 
reaches yet untrod. 

Up to the right, above a grove of white aspens 
straight and slender as a bamboo forest, is a rounded, 
almost bare lookout peak 10,000 feet high known as 
Grass Mountain. We zigzag up the lazy switchback 
trail, past the ranger's log cabin, past a hunting lodge 
of some Texas club, through the fenced ranch fields 
of some New York health seekers come to this 10,000 
feet altitude horse ranching; and that brings up an- 
other important feature of the " tent dwellers " in 
New Mexico. There is nothing worse for the con- 
sumptive than idle time to brood over his own depres- 
sion. If he can combine outdoor sleeping and out- 
door living and twelve hours of sunshine in a climate 
of pure ozone with an easy occupation, conditions are 



58 THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 

almost Ideal for recovery; and that is what thousands 
are doing — combining light farming, ranching, or 
fruit growing with the search for health. We passed 
the invalid's camp chair on this ranch where " broncho 
breaking " had been in progress. 

Grass Mountain is used as a lookout station for 
fires on the Upper Pecos. The world literally lies 
at your feet. You have all the exaltation of the 
mountain climber without the travail and labor; for 
the rangers have cut an easy trail up the ridge; and 
you stand with the snow wall of the peaks on your 
north, the crumpled, purpling masses of the Santa Fe 
Range across the Pecos Caiion, and the whole Pecos 
Valley below you. Not a fire can start up for a hun- 
dred miles but the mushroom cone of smoke is visible 
from Grass Mountain and the rangers spur to the 
work of putting the fire out. Though thousands of 
outsiders camp and hunt in Pecos Caiion every year, 
not $50 loss has occurred through fire; and the fire 
patrol costs less than $47 a year. The " why " of this 
compared to the fire-swept regions of Idaho Is simply 
a matter of trails. The rangers have cut five or six 
hundred miles of trails all through the Pecos, along 
which they can spur at breakneck speed to put out 
fires. In Idaho and Washington, thanks to the petty 
spites of local congressmen and senators, the Service 
has been so crippled by lack of funds that fewer trails 
have been cut through that heavy Northwest timber; 
and men cannot get out on the ground soon enough to 
stop the fire while it is small. So harshly has the 
small-minded policy of penuriousness reacted on the 



THROUGH THE PECOS FORESTS 59 

Service in the Northwest that last year the rangers 
had to take up a subscription among themselves to 
bury the men who perished fighting fire. Pecos Serv- 
ice, too, had its struggle against spite and incendia- 
rism in the old days; but that is a story long past; and 
to-day, Pecos stands as an example of what good trail 
making will do to prevent fires. 

We walked across the almost flat table of Grass 
Mountain and looked down the east side into the Las 
Vegas Caiion. Four feet of snow still clung to the 
east side of Grass Mountain, almost a straight preci- 
pice; and across the forested valley lay another ten 
or twelve feet of snow on the upper peaks of the 
Sangre de Christo Range. A pretty legend clings 
to that Sangre de Christo Range; and because people 
repeat the foolish statement that America's mountains 
lack legend and lore, I shall repeat it, though it is so 
very old. The holy padre was jogging along on his 
mule one night leading his little pack burro behind, but 
so deeply lost in his vesper thoughts that he forgot 
time and place. Suddenly, the mule stopped midway 
in the trail. The holy father looked up suddenly from 
his book of devotions. The rose-tinted afterglow of 
an Alpine sunset lay on the ghstening snows of the 
great silent range. He muttered an Ave Maria; 
"Praise be God," he said; "for the Blood of 
Christ; " and as Sangre de Christo the great white 
ridge has been known ever since. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CITY OF THE DEAD IN FRIJOLES CANON 

I AM sitting in one of the caves of the Stone Age. 
This is not fiction but fact. I am not specu- 
lating as to how those folk of neolithic times 
lived. I am writing in one of the cliff houses where 
they lived, sitting on the floor with my feet resting on 
the steps of an entrance stone stairway worn hip-deep 
through the volcanic rock by the moccasined tread 
of aeons of ages. Through the cave door, looking 
for all the world from the outside like a pigeon box, 
I can see on the floor of the valley a community house 
of hundreds of rooms, and a sacred kiva or ceremonial 
chamber where gods of fire and water were invoked, 
and a circular stone floor where men and women 
danced the May-pole before Julius Caesar was born, 
before — if Egyptian archaeologists be correct — the 
dynasties of the Nile erected Pyramid and Sphinx to 
commemorate their own oblivion. To my right and 
left for miles — for twelve miles, to be correct — 
are thousands of such cave houses against the face 
of the cliff, as the one in which I now write. Boxed 
up by the snow-covered Jemez (Hamez) Mountains 
at one end, with a black basalt gash in the rock at the 
other end through which roars a mountain torrent 
and waterfalls too narrow for two men to walk 
60 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 6i 

abreast, with vertical walls of yellow pumice straight 
up and down as if leveled by a giant trowel, in this 
valley of the Frijoles waters once dwelt a nation, 
dead and gone before the Spaniards came to America, 
vanished leaving not the shadow of a record behind 
long before William the Conqueror crossed to Eng- 
land, contemporaneous, perhaps — for all science 
knows to the contrary — with that 20,000 B. C. 
Egpytian desert runner lying in the British Museum. 

Lying in my tent camp last night listening to coyote 
and fox barlcing and to owls hooting from the dead 
silent city of the yellow cliff wall, I fell to wondering 
on this puzzle of archaeologist and historian — 
what desolated these bygone nations? The theory 
of desiccation, or drought, so plausible elsewhere, 
doesn't hold for one minute when you are here on 
the spot; for there Is the mountain brook brawling 
through the Valley not five minutes' scramble from 
any one of these caves; and there on the far western 
sky-line are the snows of the Jemez Mountains, which 
must have fed this brook since this part of the earth 
began. Was it war, or pestilence, or captivity, that 
made of the populous city a den of wolves, a resort 
for hoot owl and bittern and fox? If pestilence, then 
why are the skeletons not found in the great ossuaries 
and masses that mark the pestilential destruction of 
other Indian races? There remain only the alterna- 
tives of war, or captivity; and of either, not the ves- 
tige of a shadow of a tradition remains. One man's 
guess Is as good as another's ; and the scientist's 
guesses vary all the way from 8,000 B. C. to 400 A. 



62 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

D. So there you are ! You have as good a right to a 
guess as the highest scientist of them all; and while I 
refrain from speculation, I want to put on record the 
definite, provable fact that these people of the Stone 
Age were not the gibbering, monkey-tailed maniacs of 
claw finger nails and simian jaw which the half-baked 
pseudo-evolutionist loves to picture of Stone Age deni- 
zens. As Jack Donovan, a character working at 
Judge Abbott's in the Valley said — " Sure, monkey 
men wud a' had a haard time scratchin' thro' thim 
cliffs and makin' thim holes in the rocks." Remnants 
of shard and pottery, structure of houses, decorations 
and woven cloths and skins found wrapped as cere- 
ments round the dead all prove that these men were a 
sedentary and for that age civilized people. When 
our Celt and Saxon ancestors were still chasing wild 
boars through the forests, these people were cultivat- 
ing corn on the Upper and Lower Mesas. When 
Imperial Rome's common populace boasted few gar- 
ments but the ones in which they had been born, these 
people were wearing a cloth woven of fiber and rushes. 
When European courts trod the stately over floors of 
filthy rushes, these cliff dwellers had flooring of plaster 
and cement, and rugs of beaver and wolf and bear. 
All this you can see with your own eyes by examining 
the caves and skeletons of the Jemez Forests; and the 
fine glaze of the beautiful pottery work is as lost an 
art as the pigments of old Italy. 

As you go into the Pecos Forests to play, so you go 
into the Jemez to dream. You go to Pecos to hunt 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 63 

and fish. So you do to the Jenaez; but it is historic 
fact you are hunting and a reconstruction of the record 
of man you are fishing for. As the Pecos Forests ap- 
peal to the strenuous holiday hunter — the man who 
considers he has not had his fun till he has broken a 
leg kilhng a bear, or stood mid-waist in snow-water 
stringing fish on a line like beads on a string — so the 
Jemez appeals to the dreamer, the scholar, the scien- 
tist, the artist; and I can imagine no more ideal (nor 
cheaper) holiday than to join the American School of 
Archaeology, about which I have already spoken, that 
comes in here with scientists from every quarter of 
the world every midsummer to camp, and dig, and 
delve, and revel in the past of moonlight nights round 
campfires before retiring to sleeping quarters in the 
caves along the face of the clifi. The School has 
been a going concern for only a few years. Yet last 
year over 150 scientists came in from every quarter 
of the globe. 

Spite of warnings to the contrary given to me both 
East and West, the trip to the Jemez is one of the 
easiest and cheapest you can make in America. You 
strike in from Santa Fe; and right here, let me set 
down as emphatically as possible, two or three things 
pleasant and unpleasant about Santa Fe. 

First, it is the most picturesque and antique spot in 
America, not excepting Quebec. Color, age, leisure; 
a medley of races; sand-hills engirt by snow sky-line 
for eighty miles; the honking of a motor blending 
with the braying of a Mexican burro trotting to mar- 
ket loaded out of sight under a wood pile ; Old Spain 



64 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

and New America ; streets with less system and order 
about them than an ant hill, with a modern Woman's 
Board of Trade that will make you mind your P's and 
Q's and toe the sanitary scratch If you are apt to be 
slack; the chimes, and chimes and chimes yet again of 
old Catholic churches right across from a Wild West 
Show where a throaty band is screeching Yankee- 
Doodle; little adobe houses where I never quite know 
whether I am entering by the front door or the back; 
the Palace where Lew Wallace wrote Ben Hur, and 
eighty governors of three different nationalities pre- 
ceded him, and where the Archseological Society has 
its rooms with Lotave's beautiful mural paintings of 
the Cliff Dwellers, and where the Historical Society 
has neither room nor money enough to do what it 
ought in a region that is such a mine of history. 
Such is Santa Fe ; the only bit of Europe set down In 
America ; I venture to say the only picturesque spot In 
America, yet undiscovered by the jaded globe-trotter. 
Second, I want to put on record that Santa Fe 
should be black ashamed of itself for hiding Its light 
under a bushel. Ask a Santa Fe man why in the 
world, with all its attraction of the picturesque, the 
antique, the snowy mountains, and the weak-lunged 
one's ideal climate. It has so few tourists; and he an- 
swers you with a depreciatory shrug that " it's off the 
main line." "Off the main line?" So is Quebec 
off the main line ; yet 200,000 Americans a year see it. 
So is Yosemlte off the main line ; and 10,000 people go 
out to It every year. I have never heard that the 
Nile and the Pyramids and the Sphinx were on the 




the J. 



_- alxjve the entrance to a cliff dwelling in 
:z lurest look like present-day schoolboy sketches 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 65 

main line; yet foreigners yearly reap a fortune cater- 
ing to visiting Americans. Personally, it is a delight 
to me to visit a place untrodden by the jaded globe- 
trotter, for I am one myself; but whether it is laziness 
that prevents Santa Fe blowing its own horn, or the 
old exclusive air bequeathed to it by the grand dons of 
Spain that is averse to sounding the brass band, I love 
the appealing, picturesque, inert laziness of it all; but 
I love better to ask: " Why go to Egypt, when you 
have the wonders of an Egypt unexplored in your own 
land? Why scour the crowded Alps when the 
snowy domes of the Santa Fe and Jemez and Sangre 
de Christo He unexplored only an easy motor ride 
from your hotel? " If Santa Fe, as it is, were known 
to the big general public, 200,000 tourists a year 
would find delight within its purlieus; and while I like 
the places untrodden by travelers, still — being an 
outsider, myself, — I should like the outsiders to 
know the same delight Santa Fe has given me. 

To finish with the things of the mundane, you strike 
in to Santa Fe from a desolate little junction called 
Lamy, where the railroad has built a picturesque 
little doll's house of a hotel after the fashion of an old 
Spanish mansion. To reach the Jemez Forests where 
the ruins of the Cave Dwellers exist, you can drive or 
motor (to certain sections only) or ride. As the dis- 
tance is forty miles plus, you will find It safer and more 
comfortable to drive. If you take a driver and a 
team, and keep both over two days, it will cost you 
from $10 to $14 for the round trip. If you go in on 
a burro, you can buy the burro outright for $5 or $10, 



66 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

(Don't mind if your feet do drag on the ground. It 
will save being pitched.) If you go out with the 
American School of Archaeology (Address Santa Fe 
for particulars) your transportation will cost you still 
less, perhaps not $2. Once out, in the canons of the 
Cave Dwellers, you can either camp out with your own 
tenting and food; or put up at Judge Abbott's hospit- 
able ranch house; or quarter yourself free of charge 
in one of the thousands of cliff caves and cook your 
own food; or sleep in the caves and pay for your 
meals at the ranch. At most, your living expenses 
will not exceed $2 a day. If you do your own cook- 
ing, they need not be $1 a day. 

One of the stock excuses for Americans not seeing 
their own country is that the cost is so extortionate. 
Does this sound extortionate? 

I drove out by livery because I was not sure how 
else to find the way. We left Santa Fe at six A. M., 
the clouds still tingeing the sand-hills. I have heard 
Eastern art critics say that artists of the Southwest 
laid on their colors too strongly contrasted, too 
glaring, too much brick red and yellow ocher and 
purple. I wish such critics had driven out with me 
that morning from Santa Fe. Gregoire Pedilla, the 
Mexican driver, grew quite concerned at my silence 
and ran off a string of good-natured nonsense to en- 
tertain me; and all the while, I wanted nothing but 
quiet to revel in the intoxication of shifting color. 
Twenty miles more or less, we rattled over the sand- 
hills before we began to climb in earnest; and in that 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 67 

time we had crossed the muddy, swirling Rio Grande 
and left the railroad behind and passed a deserted 
lumber camp and met only two Mexican teams on the 
way. 

From below, the trail up looks appalling. It seems 
to be an ash shelf in pumice-stone doubling back and 
back on itself, up and up, till it drops over the top of 
the sky-line ; but the seeming riskiness is entirely decep- 
tive. Travel wears the soft volcanic tufa hub deep 
in ash dust, so that the wheels could not slide off if 
they tried; and once you are really on the climb, the 
ascent is much more gradual than It looks. In fact, 
our horses took it at a trot without urging. A certain 
Scriptural dame came to permanent grief from a habit 
of looking back ; but you will miss half the joy of going 
up to the Pajarito Plateau if you do not look back 
towards Santa Fe. The town is hidden in the sand- 
hills. The wreaths have gone off the mountain, and 
the great white domes stand out from the sky for a 
distance of eighty miles plain as if at your feet, with 
the gashes of purple and lilac where the passes cut 
into the range. Then your horses take their last turn 
and you are on top of a foothill mesa and see quite 
plainly why you have to drive 40 miles In order to go 
20. Here, White Rock Canon lines both sides of the 
Rio Grande — precipices steep and sheer as walls, cut 
sharp off at the top as a huge square block; and com- 
ing Into this canon at right angles are the canons 
where lived the ancient Cliff Dwellers — some of 
them hundreds of feet above the Rio Grande, with 
opening barely wide enough to let the mountain 



68 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

streams fall through. To reach these inaccessible 
canons, you must drive up over the mesa, though the 
driver takes you from eight to ten thousand feet up 
and down again over cliffs like a stair. 

We lunched in a little water caiion, which gashed 
the mesa side where a mountain stream came down. 
Such a camping place in a dry land is not to be passed 
within two hours of lunching time, for in some parts 
of the Southwest many of the streams are alkali; and 
a stream from the snows is better than wine. Beyond 
our lunching place came the real reason for this par- 
ticular caiion being inaccessible to motors — a climb 
steep as a stair over a road of rough bowlders with 
sharp climbing turns, which only a Western horse can 
take. Then, we emerged on the high upper 
mesa — acres and acres of it, thousands of acres of it, 
open like a park but shaded by the stately yellow pine, 
and all of it above ordinary cloud-line, still girt by 
that snowy range of opal peaks beyond. We fol- 
lowed the trail at a rattling pace — the Archaeological 
School had placed signs on the trees to Frijoles 
Canon — and presently, by great mounds of building 
stone covered feet deep by the dust and debris of 
ages, became aware that we were on historic ground. 
Nor can the theory of drought explain the abandon- 
ment of this mesa. While it rains heavily only two 
months in the year — July and August — the mesa is 
so high that it is subject to sprinkling rains all months 
of the year; to be sure not enough for springs, but 
ample to provide forage and grow corn; and for 
water, these sky-top dwellers had access to the water 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 69 

canons both before and behind. What hunting 
ground it must have been In those old days! Even 
yet you are likely to meet a flock of wild turkey face 
to face; or see a mountain lion slink away, or hear the 
bark of coyote and fox. 

"Is this it, Gregoire?" I asked. The mound 
seemed irregularly to cover several acres — pretty 
extensive remains, I thought. 

"Ah, no — no Senorita — wait," warned Gre- 
goire expectantly. 

I had not to wait long. The wagon road suddenly 
broke off short and plumb as If you tossed a biscuit 
over the edge of the Flatlron roof. I got out and 
looked down and then — went dumb 1 Afterwards, 
Mrs. Judge Abbott told me they thought I was afraid 
to come down. It wasn't that! The thing so far 
surpassed anything I had ever dreamed or seen; and 
the color — well — those artists accused of over- 
coloration could not have over-colored if they had 
tried. Pigments have not been invented that could 
do it! 

Picture to yourself two precipices three times the 
height of Niagara, three times the height of the 
Metropolitan Tower, sheer as a wall of blocked 
yellow and red masonry, no wider apart than you can 
shout across, ending in the snows of the Jemez to the 
right, shut In black basalt walls to the left, forested 
with the heavy pines to the very edge and down the 
blocky tiers of rocks and escarpments running Into 
blind angles where rain and sun have dyed the terra 
cotta pumice blood-red. And picture the face of the 



70 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

cliff under your feet, the sides of the massive rocks 
eroded to the shapes of tents and tepees and beehives, 
pigeon-holed by literally thousands of windows and 
doors and arched caves and winding recess and port- 
holes — a city of the dead, silent as the dead, old 
almost as time ! 

The wind came soughing up the cafion with the 
sound of the sea. The note of a lonely song sparrow 
broke the silence in a stab. Somewhere, down among 
the tender green, lining the caiion stream, a mourning 
dove uttered her sad threnody — then, silence and 
the soughing wind; then, more silence; then, if I had 
done what I wanted to, I would have sat down on the 
edge of the canon wall and let the palpable past come 
touching me out of the silence. 

A community house of some hundreds of rooms lay 
directly under me In the floor of the valley. This 
was once a populous city twelve miles long, a city of 
one long street, with the houses tier on tier above each 
other, reached by ladders, and steps worn hip-deep in 
the stone. Where had the people gone; and why? 
What swept their civilization away? When did the 
age-old silence fall? Seven thousand people do not 
leave the city of their building and choice, of their 
loves and their hates, and their wooing and their 
weddings, of their birth and their deaths — do not 
leave without good reason. What was the reason? 
What gave this place of beauty and security and thrift 
over to the habitation of bat and wolf? Why did 
the dead race go? Did they flee panic-stricken, pur- 
sued like deer by the Apache and the Ute and the 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 71 

Navajo? Or were they marched out captives, weep- 
ing? Or did they fall by the pestilence? Answer 
who canl Your guess is as good as mine! But 
there is the sacred ceremonial underground chamber 
where they worshiped the sacred fire and the plumed 
serpent, guardian of the springs; where the young 
boys were taken at time of manhood and instructed 
in virtue and courage and endurance and cleanliness 
and reticence. " If thou art stricken, die like the 
deer with a silent throat, " says the adage of the 
modern Pueblo Indian. " When the foolish speak, 
keep thou silent. " " When thou goest on the trail, 
carry only a light blanket." Good talk, all of it, for 
young boys coming to realize themselves and life! 
And there farther down the valley is the stone circle 
or dancing floor where the people came down from 
their cliff to make merry and express in rhythm the 
emotions which other nations express in poetry and 
music. The whole city must have been the grand- 
stand when the dancing took place down there. 

It was Gregoire who called me to myself. 

*' We cannot take the wagon down there, " he said. 
" No wagon has ever gone down here. You walk 
down slow and I come with the horses, one by one. " 

It sounded a good deal easier than it looked. I 
haven't seen a steeper stair; and if you Imagine five 
ladders trucked up zigzag against the Flatiron Build- 
ing and the Flatiron Building three times higher than 
it is, you'll have an idea of the appearance of the situ- 
ation; but it looked a great deal harder than it really 
was, and the trail has since been improved. The little 



72 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

steps cut in the volcanic tufa or white pumice are soft 
and offer a grip to foothold. They grit to your foot- 
step and do not slide like granite and basalt, though if 
New, Mexico wants to make this wonderful Frijoles 
Caiion accessible to the public, or if the Archaeological 
School can raise the means and cooperate with the 
Forestry Service trail makers, a broad graded wagon 
road should be cut down the face of this canon, graded 
gradually enough for a motor. The day that is done, 
visitors will number not 150 a year but 150,000; for 
nothing more exquisitely beautiful and wonderful 
exists in America. 

It seems almost incredible that Judge and Mrs. 
Abbott have brought down this narrow, steep tier of 
600 steps all the building material, all the furniture, 
and all the farm implements for their charming ranch 
place; but there the materials are and there is no other 
trail in but one still less accessible. 

That afternoon, Mrs. Abbott and I wandered up 
the valley two or three miles and visited the high 
arched ceremonial cave hundreds of feet up the face 
of the precipice. The cave was first discovered by 
Judge and Mrs. Abbott on one of their Sunday after- 
noon walks. The Archseological School under Dr. 
Hewitt cleared out the debris and accumulated erosion 
of centuries and put the ceremonial chamber in its 
original condition. " Restoring the ruins " does not 
mean " manufacturing ruins. " It means digging out 
the erosion that has washed and washed for thousands 
of years down the hillsides during the annual rains. 
All the caves have been originally plastered in a sort 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 73 

of terra cotta or ocher stucco. When that is reached 
and the charred wooden beams of the smoked, arched 
ceilings, restoration stops. The aim is to put the 
caves as they were when the people abandoned them. 
On the floors is a sort of rock bottom of plaster or 
rude cement. When this is reached, digging stops. 
It is in the process of digging down to these floors that 
the beautiful specimens of prehistoric pottery have 
been rescued. Some of these specimens may be seen 
in Harvard and Yale and the Smithsonian and the 
Natural History Museum in New York, and in the 
Santa Fe Palace, and the Field Museum of Chicago. 
Sometimes as many as four feet of erosion have over- 
laid the original flooring. When digging down to the 
flooring of the ceremonial cave, an estufa or sacred 
secret underground council chamber was found; and 
this, too, was restored. The pueblo of roofless cham- 
bers seen from the hilltop on the floor of the valley 
was dug from a mound of debris. In fact, too great 
praise cannot be given Dr. Hewitt and his co-workers 
for their labors of restoration; and the fact that Dr. 
Hewitt was a local man has added to the effectiveness 
of the work, for he has been in a position to learn 
from New Mexican Indians of any discoveries and 
rumors of discoveries in any of the numerous caves 
up the Rio Grande. For instance, when about half- 
way down the trail that first day, at the Frijoles Canon 
or Rito de los Frijoles, as it is called, I met on an 
abrupt bend in the trail a Pueblo Indian from Santa 
Clara — blue jean suit, red handkerchief around neck, 
felt hat, huge silver earrings and teeth white as 



74 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

pearls — Juan Gonzales, one of the workers in the 
canon, who knows every foot of the Rio Grande. 
Standing against the white pumice background, it was 
for an instant as if one of the cave people had stepped 
from the past. Well, it was Wan, as we outsiders 
call him, who one day brought word to the Archaeo- 
logical workers that he had found in the pumice dust 
in one of the caves the body of a woman. The cave 
was cleaned out or restored, and proved to be a back 
apartment or burial chamber behind other chambers, 
which had been worn away by the centuries' wash. 
The cerements of the body proved to be a woven cloth 
like burlap, and beaver skin. There you may see the 
body lying to-day, proving that these people under- 
stood the art of weaving long before the Flemings 
had learned the craft from Oriental trade. 

You could 'stay in the Rito Caiion for a year and 
find a cave of fresh interest each day. For instance, 
there is the one where the form of a huge plumed 
serpent has been etched like a molding round under 
the arched roof. The serpent, it was, that guarded 
the pools and the springs; and when one considers 
where snakes are oftenest found, it is not surprising 
that the serpent should have been taken as a totem 
emblem. Many of the chambers show six or seven 
holes in the floor — places to connect with the Great 
Earth Magician below. Little alcoves were carved 
In the arched walls for the urns of meal and water; 
and a sacred fireplace was regarded with somewhat 
the same veneration as ancient Orientals preserved 
their altar fires. In one cave, some old Spanish padre 




The front-door view from a cave dwelling, down the vallev 
of the Rito de los Frijoles, New Mexico 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 75 

has come and carved a huge cross, in rebuke to pagan 
symbols. Other large arched caves have housed the 
wandering flocks of goats and sheep in the days of the 
Spanish regime; and there are other caves where 
horse thieves and outlaws, who infested the West 
after the Civil War, hid secure from detection. In 
fact, if these caves could speak they *' would a tale 
unfold. " 

The aim of the Archaeological Society is year by 
year to restore portions till the whole Rito is restored; 
but at the present rate of financial aid, complete resto- 
ration can hardly take place inside a century. When 
you consider that the Rito is only one of many pre- 
historic areas of New Mexico, of Utah, of Colorado, 
awaiting restoration, you are constrained to wish that 
some philanthropist would place a million or two at 
the disposal of the Archaeological Society. If this 
were done, no place on earth could rival the Rito ; for 
the funds would make possible not only the restoration 
of the thousands of mounds buried under tons of 
debris, but it would make the Canon accessible to the 
general public by easier, nearer roads. The inaccessi- 
bility of the Rito may be in harmony with its ancient 
character; but that same inaccessibility drives thou- 
sands of tourists to Egypt instead of the Jemez 
Forests. 

There are other things to do in the Cafion besides 
explore the City of the Dead. Wander down the 
bed of the stream. You are passing through parks 
of stately yellow pine, and flowers which no botanist 
has yet classified. There is the globe cactus high up 



76 THE CITY OF THE DEAD 

on the black basalt rocks, blood-red and fiery as if 
dyed in the very essence of the sun. There is the 
mountain pink, compared to which our garden and 
greenhouse beauties are pale as white woman com- 
pared to a Hopi. There is the short-stemmed Eng- 
lish field daisy, white above, rosy red below, of which 
Tennyson sings in " Maud." Presently, you notice 
the stream banks crushing together, the waters tum- 
bling, the pumice changing to granite and basalt; and 
you are looking over a fall sheer as a plummet, fine as 
mist. 

Follow farther down I The caiion is no longer a 
valley. It is a corridor between rocks so close they 
show only a slit of sky overhead; and to follow the 
stream bed, you must wade. Beware how you do that 
on a warm day when a thaw of snow on the peaks 
might cause a sudden freshet; for if the waters rose 
here, there would be no escape ! The day we went 
down a thaw was not the danger. It was cold; the 
clouds were looming rain, and there was a high wind. 
We crept along the rock wall. Narrower and darker 
grew the passageway. The wind came funneling up 
with a mist of spray from below; and the mossed 
rocks on which we waded were slippery as only wet 
moss can be. We looked over ! Down — down — 
down — tumbled the waters of the Rito, to one black 
basin in a waterfall, then over a ledge to another in 
spray, then down — down — down to the Rio 
Grande, many feet below. You come back from the 
brink with a little shiver, but it was a shiver of sheer 



THE CITY OF THE DEAD 77 

delight. No wonder dear old Bandelier, the first of 
the great archaeologists to study this region, opens his 
quaint myth with the simple words — " The RIto is a 
beautiful place. " 



CHAPTER V 

THE ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

THEY call it " the Enchanted Mesa," this 
island of ocher rock set in a sea of light, 
higher than Niagara, beveled and faced 
straight up and down as if smoothed by some giant 
trowel. One great explorer has said that its flat top 
is covered by ruins; and another great scientist has 
said that it isn't. Why quarrel whether or not this is 
the Enchanted Mesa? The whole region is an En- 
chanted Mesa, a Painted Desert, a Dream Land 
where mingle past and present, romance and fact, 
chivalry and deviltry, the stately grandeur of the old 
Spanish don and the smart business tricks of modern 
Yankeedom. 

Shut your mind to the childish quarrel whether 
there is a heap of old pottery shards on top of that 
mesa, or whether the man who said there was carried 
It up with him ; whether the Hopi hurled the Spaniards 
off that particular cliff, or off another! Shut your 
mind to the childish, present-day bickering, and the 
past comes trooping before you in painted pageantry 
more gorgeous and stirring than fiction can create. 
First march the enranked old Spanish dons encased in 
armor-plate from visor to leg greaves, in this hot land 
where the very touch of metal is a burn. Back at 
78 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 79 

Santa Fe, in Governor Prince's fine collection, you can 
see one of the old breastplates dug up from these 
Hopi mesas with the bullet hole square above the 
heart. Of course, your old Spanish dons are followed 
by cavalry on the finest of mounts, and near the 
leader rides the priest. Sword and cross rode grandly 
in together; and up to 1700, sword and cross went 
down ignominiously before the fierce onslaught of the 
enraged Hopi. I confess it does not make much 
difference to me whether the Spaniards were hurled 
to death from this mesa — called Enchanted — or 
that other ahead there, with the village on the tip-top 
of the cliff like an old castle, or eagle's nest. The 
point is — pagan hurled Christian down ; and for two 
centuries the cross went down with the sword before 
savage onslaught. Martyr as well as soldier blood 
dyed these ocher-walled cliffs deeper red than their 
crimson sands. 

Then out of the romantic past comes another era. 
The Navajo warriors have obtained horses from the 
Spaniards; and henceforth, the Navajo Is a winged 
foe to the Hopi people across Arizona and New 
Mexico. You can imagine him with his silver trap- 
pings and harnessings and belts and necklaces and tur- 
quoise-set buttons down trouser leg, scouring below 
these mesas to raid the flocks and steal the wives of 
the Hopi; and the Hopi wives take revenge by con- 
quering their conqueror, bringing the arts and crafts 
of the Hopi people — silver work, weaving, basketry 
— into the Navajo tribe, I confess it does not make 
much difference to me whether the raid took place a 



8o ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

minute before midday, or a second after nightfall. I 
can't see the point to this breaking of historical heads 
over trifles. The point Is that after the Incoming of 
Spanish horses and Spanish firearms, the Navajos be- 
came a terror to the Hopi, who took refuge on the 
uppermost tip-top of the highest mesas they could find. 
There you can see their cities and towns to this day. 

And If you let your mind slip back to still remoter 
eras, you are lost In a maze of antiquities older than 
the traditions of Egypt. Draw a line from the Man- 
zano Forests east of Albuquerque west through Isleta 
and Laguna and Acoma and ZunI and the three mesas 
of Arizona to Oralbl and Hotovllle for 400 miles to 
the far west, and along that line you will find ruins of 
churches, temples, council halls, call them what you 
will, which antedate the coming of the Spaniards by so 
many centuries that not even a tradition of their 
object remained when the conquerors came. Some of 
these ruins — In the Manzanos and In western Ari- 
zona — would house a modern cathedral and seat an 
audience of ten thousand. What were they : council 
halls, temples, what? And what reduced the nation 
that once peopled them to a remnant of nine or ten 
thousand HopI all told? Do you not see how the 
past of this whole Enchanted Mesa, this Painted 
Desert, this Dream Land, is more romantic than 
fiction could create, or than picayune historic disputes 
as to dates and broken crockery? 

There are prehistoric cliff dwellings in this region 
of as great marvel as up north of Santa Fe; north of 
Ganado at Chin Lee, for Instance. But If you wish to 




A Hopi wooing, which has an added interest in that among 
Hopi Indians, women are the rulers of the household 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 8i 

see the modern descendants of these prehistoric Cliff 
Dwellers, you can see them along the line of the 
National Forests from the Manzanos east of Albu- 
querque to the Coconino and Kaibab at Grand Cafion 
in Arizona. Let me explain here also that the Hopi 
are variously known as Moki, Zuiii, Pueblos ; but that 
Hopi, meaning peaceful and life-giving, is their gen- 
eric name; and as such, I shall refer to them, though 
the western part of their reserve is known as Moki 
Land. You can visit a pueblo at Isleta, a short run 
by railroad from Albuquerque ; but Isleta has been so 
frequently " toured " by sightseers, I preferred to go 
to the less frequented pueblos at Laguna and Acoma, 
just south of the western Manzano National Forests, 
and on up to the three mesas of the Moki Reserve in 
Arizona. Also, when you drive across Moki Land, 
you can cross the Navajo Reserve, and so kill two 
birds with one stone. 

Up to the present, the Inconvenience of reaching 
Acoma will effectually prevent it ever being *' toured." 
When you have to take a local train that lands you 
in an Indian town where there is no hotel at two 
o'clock in the morning, or else take a freight, which 
you reach by driving a mile out of town, fording an 
irrigation ditch and crawling under a barb wire fence 
: — ■ there is no immediate danger of the objective point 
being rushed by tourist traffic. This is a mistake both 
for the tourist and for the traffic. If anything as 
unique and wonderful as Acoma existed in Egypt or 
Japan, it would be featured and visited by thousands 
of Americans yearly. As it is, I venture to say, not a 



82 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

hundred travelers see Acoma's Enchanted Mesa in a 
year, and half the number going out fail to see it 
properly owing to inexperience in Western ways of 
meeting and managing Indians. For instance, the 
day before I went out, a traveler all the way from 
Germany had dropped off the transcontinental and 
taken a local freight for the Hopi towns. When a 
tourist wants to see things in Germany, he finds a hun- 
dred willing palms out to collect and point the way; 
but when a tourist leaves the beaten trail in America, 
if he asks too many questions, he is promptly told to 
" go to — " I'll not say where. That German wasn't 
in a good mood when he dropped off the freight train 
at Laguna. Good rooms you can always get at the 
Marmons, but there is no regular meal place except 
the section house. If you are a good Westerner, you 
will carry your own luncheon, or take cheerful pot luck 
as it comes; but the German wasn't a good West- 
erner; and it didn't improve his temper to have butter 
served up mixed with flies to the tune of the land- 
lady's complaint that " it didn't pay nohow to take 
tourists " and she " didn't see what she did it for 
anyway." 

They tell you outside that it is a hard drive, all the 
way from twenty-five to thirty miles to Acoma. 
Don't you believe it! For once, Western miles are 
too short. The drive is barely eighteen miles and as 
easy as on a paved city street ; but the German had left 
most of his temper at Laguna. When he reached 
the foot of the steep acclivity leading up to the town 
of Acoma on the very cloud-crest of a rampart rock 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 83 

and found no guide, he started up without one and, of 
course, missed the way. How he ever reached the 
top without breaking his neck is a wonder. The 
Indians showed me the way he had come and said 
they could not have done it themselves. Anyway, 
what temper he had not left at Laguna he scattered 
sulphurously on the rocks before he reached the crest 
of Acoma ; and when he had climbed the perilous way, 
he was too fatigued to go on through the town. The 
whole episode is typically characteristic of our stupid 
short-sightedness as a continent to our own advantage. 
A $20 miner's tent at Laguna for meals, another at 
Acoma, a good woman in charge at the Laguna end 
to put up the lunches, a $10 a month Indian boy to 
show tourists the way up the cliff — and thousands of 
travelers would go in and come out with satisfaction. 
Yet here is Acoma, literally the Enchanted, unlike 
anything else in the whole wide world; and it Is shut 
off from the sightseer because enterprise is lacking to 
put in $100 worth of equipment and set the thing 
going. Is it any wonder people say that Europeans 
live on the opportunities Americans throw away? If 
Acoma were in Germany, they would be diverting the 
Rhine round that way so you could see It by moonlight. 

Being a Westerner, it didn't inconvenience me very 
seriously to rise at four, and take a cab at five, and 
drive out from Albuquerque a mile to the freight 
yards, where it was necessary to wet one's feet in an 
aceqiiia ditch and crawl under a barb wire fence to 
reach the caboose. The desert sunrise atoned for 



84 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

all — air pure wine, the red-winged blackbirds, thou- 
sands of them, whistling sheer joy of life along the 
overflow swamps of the irrigation canals. The train 
passes close enough to the pueblo of Isleta for you to 
toss a stone into the back yards of the little adobe 
dwellings ; but Isleta at best is now a white-man edition 
of Hopi type. Few of the houses run up tier on tier 
as in the true pueblo; and the gorgeous skirts and 
shirts seen on the figures moving round the doors are 
nothing more nor less than store calico in diamond 
dyes. In the true Hopi pueblo, these garments would 
be sun-dyed brown skin on the younger children, and 
home-woven, vegetable-dyed fabric on the grown-ups. 
The true Hopi skirt is nothing more nor less than an 
oblong of home-woven cloth, preferably white, or 
vegetable blue, brought round to overlap in front 
under a belt, with, perhaps, shoulder straps like a 
man's braces. A shawl over nature's undergarments 
completes the native costume ; and the little monkey- 
shaped bare feet cramped from long scrambling over 
the rocks get better grip on steep stone stairs than 
civihzed boots, though many of the pueblo women are 
now affecting the latter. 

The freight train climbs and climbs into the gypsum 
country of terrible drought, where nothing grows 
except under the ditch, and the cattle lie dead of thirst, 
and the wind blows a hurricane of dust that almost 
knocks you off your feet. 

The railroad passes almost through the lower 
streets of Laguna; so that when you look up, you see 
tier upon tier of streets and three-story houses up and 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 85 

up to the Spanish Church that crowns the hill. You 
get off at Laguna, but do not waste much time there; 
for the glories of Laguna are past. Long ago — in 
the fifties or thereabouts — the dam to the lagoon 
which gives the community its name broke, letting go 
a waste of flood waters; and since that time, the men 
of Laguna h^ve had to go away for work, the women 
only remaining constantly at the village engaged 
herding their flocks and making pottery. Perhaps it 
should be stated here in utter contradiction to the Her- 
bert Spencer school of sociology that among the Hopi 
the women not only rule but own the house and all that 
therein is. The man may claim the corn patch out- 
side the town limits, where you see rags stuck on sticks 
marking each owner's bounds; or if he attends the 
flocks he may own them ; but the woman Is as supreme 
a ruler in the house as In the Navajo tribe, where the 
supreme deity is female. If the man loses affection 
for his spouse, he may gather up his saddle and bridle, 
and leave. 

" I marry, yes," said Marie Iteye, my Acoma 
guide, to me, " and I have one girl — her," pointing 
to a pretty child, " but my man, I guess he — a bad 
boy — he leave me." 

If the wife tires of her lord, all she has to do is 
hang the saddle and bridle outside. My gentleman 
takes the hint and must be off. 

I set this fact down because a whole school of 
modern sex sociologists, taking their cue from Herbert 
Spencer, who never in his life knew an Indian first 
hand, write nonsensical deductions about the evolution 



86 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

of woman from slave status. Her position has been 
one of absolute equality among the Hopi from the 
earliest traditions of the race. 

At Laguna, you can obtain rooms with Mr. Mar- 
mon, or Mr. Pratt ; but you must bring your luncheon 
with you; or, as I said before, take chance luck outside 
at the section house. A word as to Mr. Marmon 
and Mr. Pratt, two of the best known white men in 
the Indian communities of the Southwest. Where 
white men have foregathered with Indians, it has usu- 
ally been for the higher race to come down to the level 
of the lower people. Not so with Marmon and Pratt I 
If you ask how it is that the pueblos of Laguna and 
Acoma are so superior to all other Hopi communities 
of the Southwest, the answer invariably is " the influ- 
ence of the two Marmons and Pratt. " Coming 
West as surveyors in the early seventies the two Mar- 
mons and Pratt opened a trading store, married 
Indian women and set themselves to civilize the whole 
pueblo. After almost four years' pow-wow and 
argument and coaxing, they in 1879 succeeded in 
getting three chddren, two boys and a girl, to go to 
school in the East at Carlisle. To-day, those three 
children are leading citizens of the Southwest. Later 
on, the trouble was not to induce children to go, but to 
handle the hundreds eager to be sent. To-day, there 
is a government school here, and the two pueblos of 
Laguna and Acoma are among the cleanest and most 
advanced of the Southwest. Fifteen hundred souls 
there are, living in the hillside tiered-town, where you 
may see the transition from Indian to white in the sub- 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 87 

stitutlon of downstairs doors for the ladders that for- 
merly led to entrance through the roof. Out at 
Acoma, with its 700 sky dwellers perched sheer hun- 
dreds of feet straight as arrow-flight above the plain, 
you can count the number of doors on one hand. 
Acoma is still pure Hopi. Only one inhabitant — 
Marie Iteye — speaks a word of English; but It is 
Hopi under the far-reaching and civilizing influence 
of " Marmon and Pratt." The streets — ist, 2nd 
and 3rd, they call them — of the cloud-cliff town are 
swept clean as a white housewife's floor. Inside, the 
three story houses are all whitewashed. To be sure, a 
hen and her flock occupy the roof of the first story. 
Perhaps a burro may stand sleepily on the next roof; 
but then, the living quarters are in the third story, with 
a window like the porthole of a ship looking out over 
the precipice across the rolling, purpling, shimmering 
mesas for hundreds and hundreds of miles, till the sky- 
line loses itself in heat haze and snow peaks. The 
inside of these third story rooms is spotlessly clean, big 
ewers of washing water on the floor, fireplaces in the 
corners with sticks burning upright, doorways opening 
to upper sleeping rooms and meal bins and corn caves. 
Fancy being spotlessly clean where water must be car- 
ried on the women's heads and backs any distance up 
from 500 to 1,500 feet. Yet I found some of the 
missionaries and government teachers and nuns among 
the Indians curiously discouraged about results. 

" It takes almost three generations to have any per- 
manent results, " one teacher bewailed. " We doubt 
if it ever does much good." 



88 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

"Doubt If It ever does much good?" I should 
like to take that teacher and every other discouraged 
worker among the Indians first to Acoma and then, 
say, to the Second Mesa of the Moki Reserve. In 
Acoma, I would not be afraid to rent a third story 
room and spread my blanket, and camp and sleep and 
eat for a week. At the Second Mesa, where mission 
work has barely begun — well, though the crest of the 
peak is swept by the four winds of heaven and disin- 
fected by a blazing, cloudless sun, I could barely stay 
out two hours; and the next time I go, I'll take a large 
pocket handkerchief heavily charged with a deodor- 
izer. At Acoma, you feel you are among human 
beings like yourself; of different lineage and traditions 
and belief, but human. At the Second Mesa, you fall 
to raking your memory of Whitechapel and the 
Bowery for types as sodden and putrid and de- 
generate. 

Mr. Marmon furnishes team and Indian driver to 
take you out to Acoma ; and please remember, the dis- 
tance Is not twenty-five or fifty miles as you have been 
told, but an easy eighteen with a good enough road 
for a motor If you have one. 

Set out early In the day, and you escape the heat. 
Sun up; the yellow-throated meadowlarks lilting and 
tossing their liquid gold notes straight to heaven; the 
desert flowers such a mass of gorgeous, voluptuous 
bloom as dazzle the eye — cactus, blood-red and gold 
and carmine, wild pink, scarlet poppy, desert gera- 
nium, little shy, dwarf, miniature English daisies over 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 89 

which Tennyson's " Maud " trod — gorgeous desert 
flowers voluptuous as oriental women — who said our 
Southwest was an arid waste? It is our Sahara, our 
Morocco, our Algeria; and we have not yet had sense 
enough to discover it in its beauty. 

Red-shawled women pattered down the trail from 
the hillside pueblo of Laguna, or marched back up 
from the yellow pools of the San Jose River, jars of 
water on their heads; figures in bronze, they might 
have been, or women of the Ganges. Then, the 
morning light strikes the steeples of the twin-towered 
Spanish mission on the crest of the hill; and the dull 
steeples of the adobe church glow pure mercury. 
And the light broods over the stagnant pools of the 
yellow San Jose; and the turgid, muddy river flows 
pure gold. And the light bathes the sandy, parched 
mesas and the purple mountains girding the plains 
around in yellow walls flat topped as If leveled by a 
trowel, v*^ith here and there in the distant sky-line the 
opal gleam as of a snow peak immeasurably far away. 
It dawns on you suddenly — this is a realm of pure 
light. How J. W. M. Turner would have gone wild 
with joy over it — light, pure light, split by the shim- 
mering prism of the dusty air into rainbow colors, 
transforming the sand-charged atmosphere into an 
unearthly morning gleam shot with gold dust. You 
know now that the big globe cactus shines with the 
glow of a Burma ruby here when it is dull in the East- 
ern conservatory, because here is of the very essence 
of the sun. The wild poppies shine on the desert 
sands like stars because, like the stars, they draw 



90 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

their life from the sun. And the blue forget-me-nots 
are like bits of heaven, because their faces shine with 
the light of an unclouded sky from dawn to dark. 

You see the countless herds of sheep and goats and 
cattle and horses belonging to the Indian pueblos, 
herded, perhaps, by a little girl on horseback, or a 
couple of boys lying among the sage brush; but the 
figures come to your eye unreal and out of all per- 
spective, the horses and cattle, exaggerated by heat 
mirage, long and leggy like camels in Egypt, the boys 
and girls lifted by the refraction of light clear off 
earth altogether, unreal ghost figures, the bleating 
lambs and kids enveloped in a purple, hazy heat 
veil — an unreal Dream World, an Enchanted Mesa 
all of it, a Painted Desert made of lavender mist and 
lilac light and heat haze shimmering and unreal as a 
poet's vision. 

It adds to the glamour of the unreal as the sun 
mounts higher, and the planed rampart mountain 
walls encircling the mesa begin to shimmer and shift 
and lift from earth in mirage altogether. 

You hear the bleat-bleat of the lambs, and come 
full in the midst of herds of thousands going down to 
a water pool. These Indians are not poor; not poor 
by any means. Their pottery and baskets bring them 
ready money. Their sheep give them meat and wool ; 
and the little corn patches suflice for meal. 

Then the blank wall of the purple mountains opens; 
and you pass into a large saucer-shaped valley engirt 
as before by the troweled yellow tufa walls; a lake of 
light, where the flocks lift in mirage, lanky and unreal. 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 91 

Almost the spell and lure of a Sahara are upon you, 
when you lift your eyes, and there — straight ahead 
— lies an enchanted island in this lake of light, shim- 
mering and lifting in mirage; sides vertical yellow 
walls without so much as a handhold visible. High 
as three Niagarp.s, twice as high it might be, you so 
completely lose sense of perspective; with top flat as a 
billiard table, detached from rock or sand or foothill, 
isolated as a slab of towering granite in a purple sea. 
It is the Enchanted Mesa. 

Hill Ki, my Indian driver, grunts and points at it 
with his whip. " The Enchanted Mesa, " he says. 

I stop to photograph it; but who can photograph 
pure light? Only one man has ever existed who 
could paint pure light; and Turner is dead. Did a 
race once live on this high, flat, isolated, inaccessible 
slab of huge rock? Lummis says " yes; " Hodge says 
" no. " Are there pottery remnants of a dead city? 
Lummis says " yes; " Hodge says " no. " Both men 
climbed the rock, though Hill Ki tells me confiden- 
tially they " were very scare," when it came to throw- 
ing a rope up over the end of the rock, to pull the 
climber up as if by pulley. Marmon and Pratt have 
both been up; and Hill Ki tells me so have two 
venturesome white women climbers, whose names he 
does not know, but " they weren't scare. " As we 
pass from the end to the side of the Enchanted Mesa, 
it is seen to be an oblong slab utterly cut off from all 
contact but so indented halfway up at one end as to be 
ascended by a good climber to within distance of 
throwing a rope over the top. The quarrel between 



92 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

Lummis and Hodge has waxed hotter and hotter as to 
the Enchanted Mesa without any finale to the dispute; 
and far be It from an outsider like myself to umpire 
warfare amid the gods of the antiquarian; but isn't it 
possible that a custom among the Acoma Indians may 
explain the whole matter; and that both men may be 
partly right? Miss McLaIn, who was In the Indian 
Service at Laguna, reports that once an Indian family 
told her of this Acoma ceremony. Before a youth 
reaches manhood, while he Is still being Instructed in 
the mysteries of HopI faith In the underground council 
room or kiva, It Is customary for the Acomas to blind- 
fold him and send him to the top of the Enchanted 
Mesa for a night's lonely vigil with a jar of water as 
oblation to the spirits. These jars explain the pres- 
ence of pottery, which Lummis describes. They 
would also give credence to at least periodic Inhabiting 
of the Mesa. The absence of house ruins, on the 
other hand, would explain why Hodge scouted Lum- 
mis' theory. The Indians explained to Miss McLaIn 
that a boy could climb blindfolded where he could not 
go open-eyed, a fact that all mountain engineers will 
substantiate. 

But what matters the quarrel? Is not the whole 
region an Enchanted Mesa, one of the weirdest bits 
of the New World? You have barely rounded the 
Enchanted Mesa, when another oblong colossus looms 
to the fore, sheer precipice, but accessible by tiers of 
sand and stone at the far end; that Is, accessible by 
handhold and foothold. Look again! Along the 
top of the walled precipice, a crest to the towering 




A shy little Indian maid in a Hopi village of Arizona 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 93 

slab, is a human wall, the walls of an adobe streetful 
of houses, little windows looking out flush with the 
precipice line like the portholes of a ship. Then you 
see something red flutter and move at the very edge of 
the rock top — Hopi urchins, who have spied us like 
young eagles in their eyrie, and shout and wave down 
at us, though we can barely hear their voices. It 
looks for all the world like the top story of a castle 
above a moat. 

At the foot of the sand-hill, I ask Hill Ki, why, now 
that there is no danger from Spaniard and Navajo, 
the Hopi continue to live so high up where they must 
carry all their supplies sheer, vertical hundreds of feet, 
at least 1,500 if you count all the wiggling in and out 
and around the stone steps and stone ladders, and 
niched handholds. Hill Ki grins as he unhitches his 
horses, and answers : " You understan' when you go 
up an' see 1 " But he does not offer to escort me 

up. 

As I am looking round for the beginning of a 
visible trail up, a little Hopi girl comes out from the 
sheep kraal at the foot of the Acoma Mesa. Though 
she cannot speak one word of English and I cannot 
speak one word of Hopi we keep up a most voluble 
conversation by gesture. Don't ask how we did it I 
It is wonderful what you can do when you have to. 
She is dressed in white, home-woven skirt with a white 
rag for a head shawl — badge of the good girl; and 
her stockings come only to the ankles, leaving the feet 
bare. The feet of all the Hopi are abnormally small, 
almost monkey-shaped; and when you think of it, it is 



94 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

purely cause and effect. The foot Is not flat and 
broad, because It Is constantly clutching foothold up 
and down these rocks. I saw all the HopI women 
look at my broad-soled, box-toed outing boots In 
amazement. At hard spots In the climb, they would 
turn and point to my boots and offer me help till I 
showed them that the sole, though thick, was pliable 
as a moccasin. 

The little girl signaled; did I want to go up? 

I nodded. 

She signaled; would I go up the hard, steep, quick 
way; or the long, easy path by the sand? As the 
stone steps seemed to give handhold well as foothold, 
and the sand promised to roll you back fast as you 
climbed up, I signaled the hard way; and off we set. 
I asked her how old she was; and she seemed puzzled 
how to answer by signs till she thought of her 
fingers — then up went eight with a tap to her chest 
signifying self. I asked her what had caused such 
sore Inflammation In her eyes. She thought a minute ; 
then pointed to the sand, and winnowed one hand as 
of wind — the sand storm; and so we kept an active 
conversation up for three hours without a word being 
spoken ; but by this, a little hand sought mine In vari- 
ous affectionate squeezes, and a pair of very sore eyes 
looked up with confidence, and what was lacking in 
words, she made up In shy smiles. Poor little Hopi 
kiddle ! Will your man " be bad boy," too, by and 
by? Will you acquire the best, or the worst, of the 
white civilization that is encroaching on your tena- 
cious, conservative race? After all, you are better 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 95 

off, little kiddle, a thousand fold, than if you were a 
street gamin in th,e vicious gutters of New York. 

By this, what with wind, and sand, and the weight 
of a kodak and a purse, and the hard ascent, one of 
the two climbers has to pause for breath; and what do 
you think that eight-year-old bit of small humanity 
does? Turns to give me a helping hand. That is 
too much for gravity. I laugh and she laughs and 
after that, I think she would have given me both 
hands and both feet and her soul to boot. She offers 
to carry my kodak and films and purse; and for three 
hours, I let her. Can you imagine yourself letting a 
New York, or Paris, or London street gamin carry 
your purse for three hours? Yet the Laguna people 
had told me to look out for myself. I'd find the 
Acomas uncommonly sharp. 

That climb is as easy to the Acomas as your home 
stairs to you; but it's a good deal more arduous to 
the outsider than a climb up the whole length of the 
Washington Monument, or up the Metropolitan 
Tower In New York; but It Is all easily possible. 
Where the sand merges to stone, are handhold niches 
as well as stone steps; and where the rock steps are 
too steep, are wooden ladders. At last, we swing 
under a great overhanging stone — splendid weapon 
If the Navajos had come this way in old days, and 
splendid place for slaughter of the Spanish soldiers, 
who scaled Acoma two centuries ago — up a tier of 
stone steps, and we are on top of the white limestone 
Mesa, In the town of Acoma, with Its ist, 2nd, and 
3rd streets, and its ist, 2nd, and 3rd story houses, 



96 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

the first roof reached by a movable ladder, the next 
two roofs by stone steps. 

I shall not attempt to describe the view from above. 
Take Washington's Shaft; multiply by two, set it 
down in Sahara Desert, climb to the top and look 
abroad I That Is the view from Acoma. Is the trip 
worth while? Is mountain climbing worth while? 
Do you suppose half a hundred people would yearly 
break their necks In Switzerland if climbing were not 
worth while? As Hill Ki said when I asked him 
why they did not move their city down now that all 
danger of raid had passed, " You go up an' see! " 
Now I understood. The water pools were but glints 
of silver on the yellow sands. The flocks of sheep 
and goats looked like ants. The rampart rocks that 
engirt the valley were yellow rims below; and across 
the tops of the far mesas could be seen scrub for- 
ests and snowy peaks. Have generations — genera- 
tions on generations — of life amid such color had 
anything to do with the handicrafts of these people 
• — pottery, basketry, weaving, becoming almost an 
art ? Certainly, their work Is the most artistic handi- 
craft done by Indians in America to-day. 

Boys and girls, babies and dogs, rush to salute us 
as we come up ; but my little guide only takes tighter 
hold of my hand and " shoos " them off. We pass 
a deep pool of waste water from the houses, lying 
in the rocks, and on across the square to the twin- 
towered church in front of which is a rudely fenced 
graveyard. The whole mesa is solid, hard rock; and 
to make this graveyard for their people, the women 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 97 

have carried up on their backs sand and soil enough 
to fill in a depression for a burying place. The bones 
lie thick on the surface soil. The graveyard is now 
literally a bank of human limestone. 

I have asked my little guide to take me to Marie 
Iteye, the only Acoma who speaks English; and I 
meet her now stepping smartly across the square, feet 
encased in boots at least four sizes smaller than mine, 
red skirt to knee, fine stockings, red shawl and a pro- 
fusion of turquoise ornaments. We shake hands, and 
when I ask her where she learned to speak such good 
English, she tells me of her seven years' life at Car- 
lisle. It is the one wish of her heart that she may 
some day go back: another shattered delusion that 
Indians hate white schools. 

She takes me across to the far edge of the Mesa, 
where her sisters, the finest pottery makers of Acoma, 
are burning their fine gray jars above sheep manure. 
For fifty cents I can buy here a huge fern jar with 
finest gray-black decorations, which would cost me 
$5 to $10 down at the railroad or $15 in the East; 
but there is the question of taking it out in my camp 
kit; and I content myself with a little black-brown 
basin at the same price, which Marie has used in her 
own house as meal jar for ten years. As a memento 
to me, she writes her name in the bottom. 

Her house we ascended by ladder to a first roof, 
where clucked a hen and chickens, and lay a litter of 
new puppies. From this roof goes up a tier of stone 
steps to a second roof. Off this roof is the door to 
a third story room; and a cleaner room I have never 



98 ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 

seen in a white woman's house. The fireplace is in 
one corner, the broom in the other, a window between 
looking out of the precipice wall over such a view 
as an eagle might scan. Baskets with corn and bowls 
of food and jars of drinking water stand in niches in 
the wall. The adobe floor is hard as cement, and 
clean. All walls and the ceiling are whitewashed. 
The place is spotless. 

" Where do you sleep, Marie? " I ask. 

" Downstairs 1 You come out and stay a week 
with me, mebbee, sometime." 

And as she speaks, come up the stone stairs from 
the room below, her father and brother, amazed to 
know why a woman should be traveling alone through 
Hopi and Moki and Navajo Land. 

And all the other houses visited are clean as 
Marie's. Is the fact testimony to Carlisle, or the 
twin-towered church over there, or Marmon and 
Pratt? I cannot answer; but this I do know, that 
Acoma is as different from the other Flopi or Moki 
mesas as Fifth Avenue is from the Bowery. 

All the time I was in the houses, my little guide 
had been waiting wistfully at the bottom of the 
ladder; and the children uttered shouts of glee to see 
me come down the ladder face out instead of back- 
wards as the Acomas descend. 

We descended from the Mesa by the sand-hills 
instead of the rock steps, preceded by an escort of 
romping children; but not a discourteous act took 
place during all my visit. Could I say the same of 
a three hours' visit amid the gamins of New York, 



ENCHANTED MESA OF ACOMA 99 

or London? At the foot of the cliff, we shook hands 
all round and said good-by; and when I looked back 
up the valley, the children were still waving and 
waving. If this be humble Indian life in its Simon 
pure state, with all freedom from our rules of con- 
duct, all I have to say is it is infinitely superior to the 
hoodlum life of our cities and towns. 

One point more : I asked Marie as I had asked 
Mr. Marmon, " Do you think your people are Indi- 
ans, or Aztecs?" and the answer came without a 
moment's hesitation — "Aztecs; we are not Indian 
like Navajo and Apaches." 

Opposite the Enchanted Mesa, I looked back. 
My little guide was still gazing wistfully after us, 
waving her shawl and holding tight to a coin which I 
trust no old grimalkin pried out of her hand. 



CHAPTER VI 

ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT THROUGH NAVAJO 
LAND 

WHEN you leave the Enchanted Mesa at 
Acoma, to follow the unbeaten trail on 
through the National Forests, you may 
take one of three courses; or all three courses if you 
have time. 

You may strike up into Zuiii Land from Gallup. 
Or you may go down in the White Mountains of 
Arizona from Holbrook; and here it should be stated 
that the White Mountains are one of the great un- 
hunted game resorts of the Southwest. Some of the 
best trout brooks of the West are to be found under 
the snows of the Continental Divide. Deer and 
bear and mountain cat are as plentiful as before the 
coming of the white man — and likely to remain so 
many a day, for the region is one of the most rugged 
and forbidding in the Western States. Add to the 
danger of sheer rock declivity, an almost desert-forest 
growth — dwarf juniper and cedar and giant cactus 
interwoven in a snarl, armed with spikes to keep ofF 
intruders — and you can understand why some of 
the most magnificent specimens of black-tail in the 
world roam the peaks and mesas here undisturbed 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT loi 

by the hunter. Also, on your way into the White 
Mountains, you may visit almost as wonderful pre- 
historic dwellings as in the Frijoles of New Mexico, 
or the Mesa Verde of Colorado. It is here you find 
Montezuma's Castle and Montezuma's Well, the 
former, a colossal community house built on a preci- 
pice-face and reached only by ladders; the latter, a 
huge prehistoric reservoir of unknown soundings; 
both in almost as perfect repair as if abandoned yes- 
terday, though both antedate all records and tradi- 
tions so completely that even when white men came in 
1540 the Spaniards had no remotest gleaning of their 
prehistoric occupants. Also on your way into the 
White Mountains, you may visit the second largest 
natural bridge in the world, a bridge so huge that 
quarter-section farms can be cultivated above the 
central span. 

Or you may skip the short trip out to Zuiii off the 
main traveled highway, and the long trip south 
through the White Mountains — two weeks at the 
very shortest, and you should make it six — and leave 
Gallup, just at the State line of Arizona, drive north- 
west across the Navajo Reserve and Moki Land to 
the Coconino Forests and the Tusayan and the Kai- 
bab, round the Grand Caiion up towards the State 
lines of California and Utah. If you can afford time 
only for one of these three trips, take the last one; 
for it leads you across the Painted Desert with all its 
wonder and mystery and lure of color and light and 
remoteness, with the tang of high, cool, lavender 
blooming mesas set like islands of rock in shifting seas 



102 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

of gaudy-colored sand, with the romance and the 
adventure and the movement of the most picturesque 
horsemen and herdsmen in America. It isn't 
America at all! You know that as soon as you go 
up over the first high mesa from the beaten highway 
and drop down over into another world, a world of 
shifting, shimmering distances and ocher-walled ram- 
part rocks and sand ridges as red as any setting sun 
you ever saw. It isn't America at all ! It's Arabia; 
and the Bedouins of our Painted Desert are these 
Navajo boys — a red scarf binding back the hair, 
the hair in a hard-knotted coil (not a braid), a red 
plush, or brilliant scarlet, or bright green shirt, with 
silver work belt, and khaki trousers or white cotton 
pantaloons slit to the knee, and moccasins, with more 
silver-work, and such silver bridles and harnessings as 
would put an Arab's Damascus tinsel to the blush. 
Go up to the top of one of the red sand knobs — you 
see these Navajo riders everywhere, coming out of 
their hogan houses among the juniper groves, cross- 
ing the yellow plain, scouring down the dry arroyo 
beds, infinitesimal specks of color moving at swift 
pace across these seas of sand. Or else you see 
where at night and morning the water comes up 
through the arroyo bed in pools of silver, receding 
only during the heat of the day; and moving through 
the juniper groves, out from the ocher rocks that 
screen the desert like the wings of a theater, down 
the panting sand bed of the dead river, trot vast 
herds of sheep and goats, the young bleat — bleating 
till the air quivers — driven by little Navajo girls on 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 103 

horseback, born to the saddle, as the Canadian Cree 
is born to the canoe. 

If you can't go to Zuiii Land and the White Moun- 
tain Forest and the Painted Desert, then choose the 
Painted Desert. It will give you all the sensations 
of a trip to the Orient without the expense or dis- 
comfort. Besides, you will learn that America has 
her own Egypt and her own Arabia and her own 
Persia in racial type and In handicraft and in an- 
tiquity; and that fact is worth taking home with you. 
Also, the end of the trip will drop you near your next 
jumping-off place — in the Coconino and Tusayan 
Forests of the Grand Canon. And If the lure of the 
antique still draws you, if you are still haunted by 
that blatant and impudent lie (Ignorance, like the big 
drum, always speaks loudest when it Is emptiest), 
" that America lacks the picturesque and historic," 
believe me there are antiquities in the Painted Desert 
of Arizona that antedate the antiquities of Egypt by 
8,000 years. " The more we study the prehistoric 
ruins of America," declared one of the leading ethno- 
logical scholars of the world in the School of Archse- 
ology at Rome, " the more undecided we become 
whether the civilization of the Orient preceded that 
of America, or that of America preceded the Orient." 

For Instance, on your way across the Painted 
Desert, you can strike into Canon du Shay (spelled 
Chally) , and in one of the rock walls high above the 
stream you will find a White House carved in high 
arches and groined chambers from the solid stone, a 
prehistoric dwelling where you could hide and lose a 



I04 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

dozen of our national White House. Who built the 
aerial, hidden and secluded palace? What royal 
barbaric race dwelt in it? What drove them out? 
Neither history nor geology have scintilla of answer 
to those questions. Your guess is as good as the 
next; and you haven't to go all the way to Persia, 
or the Red Sea, or Tibet, to do your guessing, but 
only a day's drive from a continental route — cost 
for team and driver $14. In fact, you can go into 
the Painted Desert with a well-planned trip of six 
months; and at the end of your trip you will know, as 
you could not at the beginning, that you have barely 
entered the margin of the wonders in this Navajo 
Land. 

To strike into the Painted Desert, you can leave 
the beaten highway at Gallup, or Holbrook, or Flag- 
staff, or the Grand Canon ; but to cross it, you should 
enter at the extreme east and drive west, or enter 
west and drive east. Local liverymen have drivers 
who know the way from point to point; and the 
charge, including driver, horses and hay, is from $6 
to $7 a day. Better still, if you are used to horse- 
back, go in with pack animals, which can be bought 
outright at a very nominal price — $25 to $40 for 
ponies, $10 to $20 for burros; but in any case, take 
along a white, or Indian, who knows the trails of the 
vast Reserve, for water is as rare as radium and only 
a local man knows the location of those pools where 
you will be spending your nooning and camp for the 
night. Camp in the Southwest at any other season 
than the two rainy months — July and August — 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 105 

does not necessitate a tent. You can spread your 
blankets and night will stretch a sky as soft as the 
velvet blue of a pansy for roof, and the stars will 
swing down so close in the rare, clear Desert air that 
you will think you can reach up a hand and pluck the 
lights like jack-o'-lanterns. Because you are in the 
Desert, don't delude yourself into thinking you'll not 
need warm night covering. It may be as hot at mid- 
day as a blast out of a furnace, though the heat is 
never stifling; but the altitude of the various mesas 
you will cross varies from 6,000 to 9,000 feet, and 
the night will be as chilly as If you were camped in 
the Canadian Northwest. 

Up to the present, the Mission of St. Michael's, 
Day's Ranch, and Mr. Hubbell's almost regal hospi- 
tality, have been open to all comers crossing the Des- 
ert — open without cost or price. In fact, if you of- 
fered money for the kindness you receive, it would be 
regarded as an insult. It is a type of the old-time 
baronial Spanish hospitality, when no door was 
locked and every comer was welcomed to the festive 
board, and if you expressed admiration for jewel, or 
silver-work, or old mantilla, it was presented to you 
by the lord of the manor with the simple and abso- 
lutely sincere words, " It is yours," which scrubs 
and bubs and dubs and scum and cockney were apt to 
take greedily and literally, with no sense of the 
noblesse oblige which binds recipient as it binds donor 
to a code of honor not put in words. It is a type of 
hospitality that has all but vanished from this sordid 
earth ; and it is a type, I am sorry to write, ill-suited 



io6 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

to an age when the Quantity travel quite as much as 
the Quality. For instance, everyone who has crossed 
the Painted Desert knows that Lorenzo Hubbell, 
who is commonly called the King of Northern Ari- 
zona, has yearly spent thousands, tens of thousands, 
entertaining passing strangers, whom he has never 
seen before and will never see again, who come un- 
announced and stay unurged and depart reluctantly. 
In the old days, when your Spanish grandee enter- 
tained only his peers, this was well; but to-day — 
well, it may work out in Goldsmith's comedy, 
where the two travelers mistake a mansion for an inn. 
But where the arrivals come in relays of from one to 
a dozen a month, and Issue orders as to hot water and 
breakfast and dinner and supper and depart tardily 
as a dead-beat from a city lodging house and break 
out in complaints and sometimes afterwards break 
out in patronizing print, it is time for the Mission and 
Day's Ranch and Mr. Hubbell's trading posts to 
have kitchen quarters for such as they. In the old 
days. Quality sat above the salt; Quantity sat below 
it and slept in rushes spread on the floor. I would 
respectfully offer a suggestion as to salting down 
much of the freshness that weekly pesters the fine old 
baronial hospitality of the Painted Desert. For in- 
stance, there was the Berlin professor, who arrived 
unwanted and unannounced after midnight, and 
quietly informed his host that he didn't care to rise 
for the family breakfast but would take his at such 
an hour. There was the drummer who ordered the 
daughter of the house " to hustle the fodder," 




A Xavajo boy who is exceptionally handsome and 
picturesque 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 107 

There was the lady who stayed unasked for three 
weeks, then departed to write ridiculous caricatures 
of the very roof that had sheltered her. There was 
the Government man who calmly ordered his host to 
have breakfast ready at three in the morning. His 
host would not ask his colored help to rise at such an 
hour and with his own hands prepared the breakfast, 
when the guest looked lazily through the window and 
seeing a storm brewing " thought he'd not mind going 
after all." 

"What? " demanded his entertainer. " You will 
not go after you have roused me at three? You will 
go; and you will go quick; and you will go this 
instant." 

The Painted Desert is bound to become as well 
known to American travelers as Algiers and the 
northern rim of the Sahara to the thousands of Euro- 
pean tourists, who yearly flock south of the Mediter- 
ranean. When that time comes, a different system 
must prevail, so I would advise all visitors going into 
the Navajo country to take their own food and camp 
kit and horses, either rented from an outfitter at the 
starting point, or bought outright. At St. Michael's 
Mission, and Ganado, and the Three Mesas, and 
Oraibi, you can pick up the necessary local guide. 

We entered the Painted Desert by way of Gallup, 
hiring driver and team locally. Motors are avail- 
able for the first thirty miles of the trip, though out 
of the question for the main 150 miles, owing to the 
heavy sand, fine as flour; but they happened to be out 
of commission the day we wanted them. 



io8 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

The trail rises and rises from the sandy levels of 
the railroad town till you are presently on the high 
northern mesa among scrub juniper and cedar, In a 
cool-scented, ozone atmosphere, as life-giving as any 
frost air of the North. The yellow ocher rocks close 
on each side in walled ramparts, and nestling in an 
angle of rock you see a little fenced ranch house, 
where they charge ten cents a glass for the privilege 
of their spring. There is the same profusion of gor- 
geous desert flowers, dyed in the very essence of the 
sun, as you saw round the Enchanted Mesa — globe 
cactus and yellow popples and wild geraniums and 
little blue forget-me-nots and a rattlesnake flower 
with a bloated bladder seed pod mottled as Its proto- 
type's skin. And the trail still climbs till you drop 
sheer over the edge of the sky-line and see a new 
world swimming below you in lakes of lilac light and 
blue shadows — blue shadows, sure sign of desert 
land as Northern lights are of hyperborean realm. 
It is the Painted Desert; and It isn't a flat sand plain 
as you expected, but a world of rolling green and 
purple and red hills receding from you in the waves 
of a sea to the belted, misty mountains rising up sheer 
in a sky wall. And it Isn't a desolate, uninhabited 
v/aste, as you expected. You round a ridge of yellow 
rock, and three Zuiil boys are loping along the trail 
In front of you — red headband, hair in a braid, red 
sash, velvet trousers — the most famous runners of 
all Indian tribes in spite of their short, squat stature. 
The Navajo trusts to his pony, and so Is a slack 
runner. Also, he is not so well nourished as the 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 109 

Zuni or Hopi, and so has not as firm muscles and 
strong lungs. These Zuiii lads will set out from 
Oraibi at daybreak, and run down to Holbrook, 
eighty miles in a day. Or you hear the tinkle of a 
bell, and see some little Navajo girl on horseback 
driving her herd of sheep down to a drinking pool. 
It all has a curiously Egyptian or Oriental effect. So 
Rachel was watering her flocks when the Midianitish 
herders drove her from the spring; and you see the 
same rivalry for possession of the waterhole In our 
own desert country as ancient record tells of that 
other storied land. 

The hay stacks, huge, tent-shaped tufa rocks to the 
right of the road, mark the approach to St. Michael's 
Mission. Where one great rock has splintered from 
the main wall Is a curious phenomenon noted by all 
travelers — a cow, head and horns, etched In perfect 
outline against the face of the rock. The driver 
tells you It Is a trick of rain and stain, but a knowl- 
edge of the tricks of lightning stamping pictures on 
objects struck In an atmosphere heavily charged with 
electricity suggests another explanation. 

Then you have crossed the bridge and the red- 
tiled roofs of St. Michael's loom above the hill, and 
you drive up to an oblong, white, green-shuttered 
building as silent as the grave — St. Michael's Mis- 
sion, where the Franciscans for seventeen years have 
been holding the gateway to the Navajo Reserve. 
Below the hill Is a little square log shack, the mission 
printing press. Behind, another shack, the post- 
office; and off beyond the hill, the ranch house of Mr. 



no ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

and Mrs. Day, two of the best known characters on 
the Arizona frontier. A mile down the arroyo is 
the convent school, Miss Drexel's Mission for the 
Indians; a fine, massive structure of brick and stone, 
equal to any of the famous Jesuit and Ursullne schools 
so famous In the history of Quebec. 

And at this little mission, with Its half-dozen build- 
ings. Is being lived over again the same heroic drama 
that Father Vimont and Mother Mary of the Incar- 
nation opened In New France three centuries ago; 
only we are a little too close to this modern drama to 
realize Its fine quality of joyous self-abnegation and 
practical religion. Also, the work of Miss Drexel's 
missionaries promises to be more permanent than that 
to the Hurons and Algonqulns of Quebec. They are 
not trying to turn Indians into white men and women 
at this mission. They are leaving them Indians with 
the leaven of a new grace working In their hearts. 
The Navajos are to-day 22,000 strong, and on the 
increase. The Hurons and Algonqulns alive to-day, 
you can almost count on your hands. Driven from 
pillar to post, they were destroyed by the civilization 
they had embraced; but the Navajos have a realm 
perfectly adapted to sustain their herds and broad 
enough for them to expand — 14,000,000 acres, in- 
cluding Mokl Land — and against any white man's 
greedy encroachment on that Reserve, Father Web- 
ber, of the Franciscans, has set his face like adamant. 
In two or three generations, we shall be putting up 
monuments to these workers among the Navajos. 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT iii 

Meanwhile, we neither know nor care what they are 
doing. 

You enter the silent hallway and ring a gong. A 
Navajo interpreter appears and tells you Father 
Webber has gone to Rome, but Father Berrard will 
be down; and when you meet the cowled Franciscan 
in his rough, brown cassock, with sandal shoes, you 
might shut your eyes and imagine yourself back in the 
Quebec consistories of three centuries ago. There is 
the same poverty, the same quiet devotion, the same 
consecrated scholarship, the same study of race and 
legend, as made the Jesuit missions famous all 
through Europe of the Seventeenth Century. Why, 
do you know, this Franciscan mission, with its three 
priests and two lay helpers. Is sustained on the small 
sum of $i,ooo a year; and out of his share of that, 
Father Berrard has managed to buy a printing press 
and issue a scholarly work on the Navajos, costing 
him $1,500! 

Next morning, when Mother Josephine, of Miss 
Drexel's Mission School, drove us back to the Fran- 
ciscan's house, we saw proofs of a second volume on 
the Navajos, which Father Berrard is issuing; a com- 
bined glossary and dictionary of Information on tribal 
customs and arts and crafts and legends and religion; 
a work of which a French academician would be more 
than proud. Then he shows us what will easily 
prove the masterpiece of his life — hundreds of draw- 
ings, which, for the last ten years, he has been having 
the medicine men of the Navajos make for their 



112 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

legends, of all the authentic, known patterns of their 
blankets and the meanings, of their baskets and what 
they mean, and of the heavenly constellations, which 
are much the same as ours except that the names are 
those of the coyote and eagle and other desert crea- 
tures instead of the Latin appellations. Lungren 
and Burbank and Curtis and other artists, who have 
passed this way, suggested the idea. Someone sent 
Father Berrard folios of blank drawing boards. 
Sepia made of coal dust and white chalk made of 
gypsum suffice for pigments. With these he has had 
the Indian medicine men make a series of drawings 
that excels anything in the Smithsonian Institute of 
Washington or the Field Museum of Chicago. For 
instance, there is the map of the sky and of the milky 
way with the four cardinal points marked in the 
Navajo colors, white, blue, black and yellow, with 
the legend drawn of the " great medicine man " 
putting the stars in their places in the sky, when along 
comes Coyote, steals the mystery bag of stars — and 
puff, with one breath he has mischievously sent the 
divine sparks scattering helter-skelter all over the face 
of heaven. There is the legend of " the spider 
maid " teaching the Navajos to weave their wonder- 
ful blankets, though the Hopi deny this and assert 
that their women captured in war were the ones who 
taught the Navajos the art of weaving. There is the 
picture of the Navajo transmigration of souls up the 
twelve degrees of a huge corn stalk, for all the world 
like the Hindoo legend of a soul's travail up to life. 
You must not forget how similar many of the Indian 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 113 

drawings are to Oriental work. Then, there is the 
picture of the supreme woman deity of the Navajos. 
Does that recall any Mother of Life in Hindoo lore? 
If all ethnologists and archaeologists had founded 
their studies on the Indian's own account of himself, 
rather than their own scrappy version of what the 
Indian told them, we should have got somewhere in 
our knowledge of the relationships of the human race. 

Father Berrard's drawings in color of all known 
patterns of Navajo blankets are a gold mine in 
themselves, and would save the squandering by East- 
ern buyers of thousands a year in faked Navajo 
blankets. Wherever Father Berrard hears of a new 
blanket pattern, thither he hies to get a drawing of 
it; and on many a fool's errand his quest has taken 
him. For instance, he once heard of a wonderful 
blanket being displayed by a Flagstaff dealer, with 
vegetable dyes of " green " in it. Dressing in dis- 
guise, with overcoat collar turned up, the priest went 
to examine the alleged wonder. It was a palpable 
cheat manufactured in the East for the benefit of 
gullible tourists. 

" Where did your Indians get that vegetable 
green?" Father Berrard asked the unsuspecting 
dealer. 

" From frog ponds," answered the store man of a 
region where water Is scarce as hens' teeth. 

Father Berrard has not yet finished his collection 
of drawings, for the medicine men will reveal certain 
secrets only when the moon and stars are in a certain 
position; but he vows that when the book Is finished 



114 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

and when he has saved money enough to issue it, his 
nom de plume shall be " Frog Pond Green." 

If we had been a party of men, we should probably 
have been put up at either the Franciscan Mission, or 
Day's Ranch; but being women we were conducted a 
mile farther down the arroyo to Miss Drexel's Mis- 
sion School for Indian boys and girls. Here 150 
little Navajos come every year, not to be transformed 
into white boys and girls, but to be trained inside and 
out in cleanliness and uprightness and grace. There 
are in all fourteen members of the sisterhood here, 
much the same type of women in birth and station 
and training as the polished nobility that founded the 
first religious institutions of New France. Perhaps, 
because the Jesuit relations record such a terrible tale 
of martyrdom, one somehow or other associates those 
early Indian missions with religions of a dolorous 
cast. Not so here I A happier-faced lot of women 
and children you never saw than these delicately nur- 
tured sisters and their swarthy-faced, black-eyed little 
wards. These sisters evidently believe that goodness 
should be a thing more beautiful, more joyous, more 
robust than evil; that the temptation to be good 
should be greater than the compulsion to be evil. 
Sisters are playing tag with the little Indian girls in 
one yard; laymen helpers teaching Navajo boys base- 
ball on the open common ; and from one of the upper 
halls comes the sound of a brass band tuning up for 
future festivities. 

We were presently ensconced in the quarters set 
aside for guests; room, parlor and refectory, where 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 115 

two gentle-faced sisters placed all sorts of temptations 
on our plates and gathered news of the big, outside 
world. Then Mother Josephine came In, a Southern 
face with youth In every feature and youth in her 
heart, and merry, twinkling, tender, understanding 
eyes. 

Presently, you hear a bugle-call signal the boys 
from play; and the bell sounds to prayers; and a 
great stillness falls ; and you would not know this was 
Navajo Land at all but for the bright blanketed folk 
camped on the hill to the right — eerie figures seen 
against the pink glow of the fading light. 

Next morning we attended mass In the little chapel 
upstairs. Priest In vestment, altar aglow with lights 
and flowers, little black-eyed faces bending over their 
prayers, the chanting of gently nurtured voices from 
the stalls — is it the Desert we are in, or an oasis 
watered by that age-old, never-falling spring of 
Service? 



CHAPTER VII 

ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT THROUGH NAVAJO 

LAND (continued) 

THERE are two ways to travel even off the 
beaten trail. One is to take a map, stake 
out pins on the points you are going to 
visit, then pace up to them lightning-flier fashion. 
If you want to, and are prepared to kill your horses, 
you can cross Navajo Land in from three to four 
days. Even going at that pace, you can get a sense 
of the wonderful coloring of the Painted Desert, of 
the light lying in shimmering heat layers split by the 
refraction of the dusty air in prismatic hues, of an 
atmosphere with the tang of northern ozone and the 
resinous scent of incense and frankincense and 
myrrh. You can see the Desert flowers that vie with 
the sun in brilliant coloring; and feel the Desert 
night sky come down so close to you that you want 
to reach up a hand and pluck the jack-o'-lantern 
stars swinging so low through the pansy-velvet mist. 
You can even catch a flying glimpse of the most 
picturesque Indian race in America, the Navajos. 
Their hogans or circular, mud-wattled houses, are 
always somewhere near the watering pools and rock 
springs; and just when you think you are most alone, 
driving through the sagebrush and dwarf juniper, 

zi6 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 117 

the bleat of a lamb is apt to call your attention to a 
flock of sheep and goats scattered almost invisibly 
up a blue-green hillside. Blue-green, did you say? 
Yes: that's another thing you can unlearn on a flying 
trip — the geography definition of a Desert is about 
as wrong as a definition could be made. A Desert 
isn't necessarily a vast sandy plain, stretching out in 
flat and arid waste. It's as variegated in its growth 
and landscape as your New England or Old England 
hills and vales, only your Eastern rivers flow all the 
time, and your Desert rivers are apt to disappear 
through evaporation and sink below the surface dur- 
ing the heat of the day, coming up again in floods 
during the rainy months, and in pools during the 
cool of morning and evening. 

But on a flying trip, you can't learn the secret 
moods of the Painted Desert. You can't draw so 
much of its atmosphere into your soul that you can 
never think of it again without such dream-visions 
floating you away in its blue-gray-lilac mists as 
wrapped the seers of old in clairvoyant prophetic 
ecstasy. On a flying trip, you can learn little or 
nothing of the Arab life of our own Desert nomads. 
You have to depend on Blue Book reports of " the 
Navajos being a dangerous, warlike race " blasted 
into submission by the effulgent glory of this, that, 
and the other military martinet writing himself down 
a hero. Whereas, if you go out leisurely among the 
traders and missionaries and Indians themselves, 
who — more's the pity — have no hand in preparing 
official reports, you will learn another story of a 



ii8 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

quiet, pastoral race who have for three hundred 
years been the victims of white man greed and white 
man lust, of blundering incompetency and hysterical 
cowardice. 

These are strong words. Let me give some in- 
stances. We were having luncheon in the priests' 
refectory of the Franciscan Mission; and for the 
benefit of those who imagine that missionaries to the 
Indians are fat and bloated on three hundred a year, 
I should like to set down the fact that the refectory 
was in a sort of back kitchen, that we ate off a red 
table-cloth with soup served in a basin and bath 
towels extemporized into serviettes. I had asked 
about a Navajo, who not long ago went locoed right 
in Cincinnati station and began stabbing murderously 
right and left. 

" In the first place," answered the Franciscan, 
" that Indian ought not to have been in Cincinnati 
at all. In the second place, he ought not to have 
been there alone. In the third place, he had great 
provocation." 

Here is the story, as I gathered it from traders 
and missionaries and Indians. The Navajo was 
having trouble over title to his land. That was 
wrong the first on the part of the white man. It was 
necessary for him to go to Washington to lay his 
grievance before the Government. Now for an 
Indian to go to Washington is as great an under- 
taking as it was for Stanley to go to Darkest Africa. 
The trip ought not to have been necessary if our 
Indian Office had more integrity and less red-tape; 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESEKT 119 

but the local agency provided him with an inter- 
preter. The next great worry to the Navajo was 
that he could not get access to " The Great White 
Father." There were interminable red-tape and de- 
lay. Finally, when he got access to the Indian Of- 
fice, he could get no definite, prompt settlement. 
With this accumulation of small worries, insignificant 
enough to a well-to-do white man but mighty 
harassing to a poor Indian, he set out for home; 
and at the station in Washington, the interpreter left 
him. The Navajo could not speak one word of 
English. Changing cars in Cincinnati, hustled and 
jostled by the crowds, he suddenly felt for his purse 

— he had been robbed. Now, the Navajo code is 
if another tribe injures his tribe, it is his duty to go 
forth instantly and strike that offender. Our own 
Saxon and Highland Scotch ancestors once had a 
code very similar. The Indian at once went locoed 

— lost his head, and began stabbing right and left. 
The white man newspaper told the story of the mur- 
derous assault in flare head lines; but it didn't tell 
the story of wrongs and procrastination. The In- 
dian Office righted the land matter; but that didn't 
undo the damage. Through the efforts of the mis- 
sionaries and the traders, the Indian was permitted 
to plead insanity. He was sent to an asylum, where 
he must have had some queer thoughts of white man 
justice. Just recendy, he has been released under 
bonds. 

The most notorious case of wrong and outrage 
and cowardice and murder known in Navajo Land 



I20 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

was that of a few years ago, when the Indian agent 
peremptorily ordered a Navajo to bring his child 
in to the Agency School. Not so did Marmon and 
Pratt sway the Indians at Laguna, when the Pueblos 
there were persuaded to send their children to Car- 
lisle; and Miss Drexel's Mission has never yet is- 
sued peremptory orders for children to come to 
school; but the martinet mandate went forth. Now, 
the Indian treaty, that provides the child shall be 
sent to school, also stipulates that the school shall 
be placed within reach of the child; and the Navajo 
knew that he was within his right in refusing to let 
the child leave home when the Government had 
failed to place the school within such distance of his 
hogan. He was then warned by the agent that un- 
less the child were sent within a certain time, troops 
would be summoned from Ft. Wingate and Ft. De- 
fiance. The Indians met, pow-wowed with one an- 
other, and decided they were still within their right 
in refusing. There can be no doubt but that if Cap- 
tain Willard, himself, had been In direct command 
of the detachment, the cowardly murder would not 
have occurred; but the Navajos were only Indians; 
and the troops arrived on the scene in charge of a 
hopelessly incompetent subordinate, who proved him- 
self not only a bully but a most arrant coward. Ac- 
cording to the traders and the missionaries and the 
Indians themselves, the Navajos were not even 
armed. Fourteen of them were in one of the mud 
hogans. They offered no resistance. They say 
they were not even summoned to surrender. Trad- 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 121 

ers, who have talked with the Navajos present, say 
the troopers surrounded the hogan in the dark, a 
soldier's gun went off by mistake and the command 
was given in hysterical fright to " fire." The In- 
dians were so terrified that they dashed out to hide 
in the sagebrush. "Bravery! Indian bravery — 
pah," one officer of the detachment was afterwards 
heard to exclaim. Two Navajos were killed, one 
wounded, eleven captured in as cold-blooded a mur- 
der as was ever perpetrated by thugs in a city street. 
Without lawyers, without any defense whatsoever, 
without the hearing of witnesses, without any fair 
trial whatsoever, the captives were sentenced to the 
penitentiary. It needed only a finishing touch to 
make this piece of Dreyfusism complete; and that 
came when a little missionary voiced the general 
sense of outrage by writing a letter to a Denver 
paper. President Roosevelt at once dispatched some- 
one from Washington to investigate; and it was an 
easy matter to scare the wits out of the little preacher 
and declare the investigation closed. In fact, it was 
one of the things that would not bear investigation; 
but the evidence still exists in Navajo Land, with 
more, which space forbids here but which comes un- 
der the sixty-fifth Article of War. The officer 
guilty of this outrage has since been examined as to 
his sanity and brought himself under possibilities of 
a penitentiary term on another count. He is still 
at middle age a subordinate officer. 

These are other secrets of the Painted Desert you 
will daily con if you go leisurely across the 



122 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

great lone Reserve and do not take with you the 
lightning-express habits of urban life. 

For instance, in the account of the Cave Dwellers 
of the Frijoles reference was made to the Indian 
legend of " the heavens raining fire " (volcanic ac- 
tion) and driving the prehistoric Pueblo peoples 
from their ancient dwelling. Mrs. Day of St. 
Michael's, who has forgotten more lore than the 
scientists will ever pick up, told me of a great chunk 
of lava found by Mr. Day in which were embedded 
some perfect specimens of corn — which seems to 
sustain the Indian legend of volcanic outburst having 
destroyed the ancient nations here. The slab was 
sent East to a museum in Brooklyn. Some scientists 
explain these black slabs as a fusion of adobe. 

As we had not yet learned how to do the Painted 
Desert, we went forward by the mail wagon from 
St. Michael's to Mr. Hubbell's famous trading post 
at Ganado. Mail bags were stacked up behind us, 
and a one-eyed Navajo driver sat in front. We were 
in the Desert, but our way led through the park-like 
vistas of the mast-high yellow pine, a region of such 
high, rare, dry air that not a blade of grass grows 
below the conifers. The soil is as dry as dust and 
fine as flour; and there is an all-pervasive odor, not 
of burning, but of steaming resin, or pine sap heated 
to evaporation; but it is not hot. The mesa runs 
up to an altitude of almost 9,000 feet, with air so 
light that you feel a buoyant lift to your heart-beats 
and a clearing of the cobwebs from your brain. You 




:^sii.^. 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 123 

can lose lots of sleep here and not feel it. All 
heaviness has gone out of body and soul. In fact, 
when you come back to lower levels, the air feels 
thick and hard to breathe. And you can go hard 
here and not tire, and stand on the crest of mesas 
that anywhere else would be considered mountains, 
and wave your arms above the top of the world. 
So high you are — you did not realize it — that the 
rim of encircling mountains is only a tiny wave of 
purplish green sky-line like the edge of an inverted 
blue bowl. 

The mesas rise and rise, and presently you are 
out and above forest line altogether among the sage- 
brush shimmering in pure light; and you become 
aware of a great quiet, a great silence, such as you 
feel on mountain peaks; and you suddenly realize 
how rare and scarce life is — life of bird or beast 
— at these high levels. The reason is, of course, 
the scarcity of water, though on our way out just 
below this mesa at the side of a dry arroyo we found 
one of the wayside springs that make life of any 
kind possible in the Desert. 

Then the trail began dropping down, down in 
loops and twists; and just at sunset we turned up a 
dry arroyo bed to a cluster of adobe ranch houses 
and store and mission. Thousands of plaintively 
bleating goats and sheep seemed to be coming out 
of the juniper hills to the watering pool, herded as 
usual by little girls; for the custom is to dower each 
child at birth with sheep or ponies, the increase of 
which becomes that child's wealth for life. Navajo 



124 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

men rode up and down the arroyo bed as graceful 
and gayly caparisoned as Arabs, or lounged around 
the store building smoking. Huge wool wagons 
loaded three layers deep with the season's fleece 
stood in front of the rancho. Women with children 
squatted on the ground, but the thing that struck you 
first as always in the Painted Desert was color: color 
in the bright headbands; color in the close-fitting 
plush shirts; color in the Germantown blankets — 
for the Navajo blanket is too heavy for Desert use; 
color in the lemon and lilac belts across the sunset 
sky; color, more color, in the blood-red sand hills 
and bright ochre rocks and whirling orange dust 
clouds where riders or herds of sheep were scouring 
up the sandy arroyo. No wonder Burbank and 
Lungren and Curtis go mad over the color of this 
subtle land of mystery and half-tones and shadows 
and suggestions. If you haven't seen Curtis' figures 
and Burbank's heads and Lungren's marvelously 
beautiful Desert scenes of this land, you have missed 
some of the best work being done in the art world 
to-day. If this work were done In Europe it would 
command Its tens of thousands, where with us it 
commands only its hundreds. Nothing that the Pre- 
Raphaelltes ever did in the Holy Lands equals in 
expressiveness and power Lungren's studies of the 
Desert; though the Pre-Raphaelltes commanded 
prices of $10,000 and $25,000, where we as a na- 
tion grumble about paying our artists one thousand 
and two thousand. 

The Navajo driver nodded back to us that this 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 125 

was Ganado; and In a few moments Mr. Hubbell 
had come from the trading post to welcome us under 
a roof that In thirty years has never permitted a 
stranger to pass Its doors unwelcomed. As Mr. 
Lorenzo Hubbell has already entered history In the 
makings of Arizona and as he shuns the limelight 
quite as " mollycoddles " (his favorite term) seek 
the spotlights, a slight account of him may not be 
out of place. First, as to his house: from the out- 
side you see the typical squat adobe oblong so suited 
to a climate where hot winds are the enemies to 
comfort. You notice as you enter the front door 
that the walls are two feet or more thick. Then 
you take a breath. You had expected a bare ranch 
interior with benches and stiff chairs backed up 
against the wall. Instead, you see a huge living- 
room forty or fifty feet long, every square foot of 
the walls covered by paintings and drawings of 
Western life. Every artist of note (with the ex- 
ception of one) who has done a picture on the South- 
west in the last thirty years Is represented by a 
canvas here. You could spend a good week study- 
ing the paintings of the Hubbell Ranch. Including 
sepias, oils and watercolors, there must be almost 
300 pictures. By chance, you look up to the 
raftered celling; a specimen of every kind of rare 
basketry made by the Indians hangs from the beams. 
On the floor lie Navajo rugs of priceless value and 
rarest weave. When you go over to Mr. Hubbell's 
office, you find that he, like Father Berrard, has 
colored drawings of every type of Mokl and Navajo 



126 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

blankets. On the walls of the office are more pic- 
tures; on the floors, more rugs; in the safes and 
cases, specimens of rare silver-work that somehow 
again remind you of the affinity between Hindoo and 
Navajo. Mr. Hubbell yearly does a quarter-of-a- 
million-dollar business in wool, and yearly extends 
to the Navajos credit for amounts running from 
twenty-five dollars to fifty thousand dollars — a trust 
which they have never yet betrayed. 

Along the walls of the living-room are doors 
opening to the sleeping apartments; and in each of 
the many guest rooms are more pictures, more rugs. 
Behind the living-room is a placito flanked by the 
kitchen and cook's quarters. 

Now what manner of man Is this so-called " King 
of Northern Arizona " ? A lover of art and a pa- 
tron of it; also the shrewdest politician and trader 
that ever dwelt in Navajo Land; a man with friends, 
who would like the privilege of dying for him; also 
with enemies who would keenly like the privilege of 
helping him to die. What the chief factors of the 
Hudson's Bay Company used to be to the Indians of 
the North, Lorenzo Hubbell has been to the Indians 
of the Desert — friend, guard, counselor, with a 
strong hand to punish when they required It, but a 
stronger hand to befriend when help was needed; 
always and to the hilt an enemy to the cheap-jack 
politician who came to exploit the Indian, though 
he might have to beat the rascal at his own game of 
putting up a bigger bluff. In appearance, a fine type 
of the courtly Spanish-American gentleman with 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 127 

Castilian blue eyes and black, beetling brows and 
gray hair; with a courtliness that keeps you guessing 
as to how much more gracious the next courtesy can 
be than the last, and a funny anecdote to cap every 
climax. You would not think to look at Mr. Hub- 
bell that time was when he as nonchalantly cut the 
cards for $30,000 and as gracefully lost it all, as 
other men match dimes for cigars. And you can't 
make him talk about himself. It is from others you 
must learn that in the great cattle and sheep war, 
In which 150 men lost their lives, it was he who led 
the native Mexican sheep owners against the ag- 
gressive cattle crowd. They are all friends now, 
the oldtime enemies, and have buried their feud; 
and dynamite will not force Mr. Hubbell to open 
his mouth on the subject. In fact, it was a pair of 
the " rustlers " themselves who told me of the time 
that the cowboys took a swoop Into the Navajo Re- 
serve and stampeded off 300 of the Indians' best 
horses; but they had rec;:oned without Lorenzo Hub- 
bell. In twenty-four hours he had got together the 
swiftest riders of the Navajos; and in another 
twenty- four hours, he had pursued the thieves 125 
miles into the wildest canons of Arizona and had 
rescued every horse. One of the men, whom he had 
pursued, wiped the sweat from his brow in memory 
of it. He Is more than a type of the Spanish- 
American gentleman. He is a type of the man that 
the Desert produces: quiet, soft spoken — power- 
fully soft spoken — alert, keen, relentless and 
versatile; but also a dreamer of dreams, a seer of 



128 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

visions, a passionate patriot, and a lover of art who 
proves his love by buying. 

The Navajos are to-day by long odds the most 
prosperous Indians in America. Their vast Reserve 
offers ample pasturage for their sheep and ponies; 
and though their flocks are a scrub lot, yielding little 
more than fifty to seventy cents a head in wool on 
the average, still it costs nothing to keep sheep and 
goats. Both furnish a supply of meat. The hides 
fetch ready money. So does the wool, so do the 
blankets; and the Navajos are the finest silversmiths 
in America. Formerly, they obtained their supply 
of raw silver bullion from the Spaniards; but to-day, 
they melt and hammer down United States currency 
into butterfly brooches and snake bracelets and 
leather belts with the fifty-cent coins changed into 
flower blossoms with a turquoise center. Ten-cent 
pieces and quarters are transformed into necklaces 
of silver beads, or buttons for shirt and moccasins. 
If you buy these things in the big Western cities, they 
are costly as Chinese or Hindoo silver; but on the 
Reserve, there is a very simple way of computing 
the value. First, take the value of the coin from 
which the silver ornament is made. Add a dollar 
for the silversmith's labor; and also add whatever 
value the turquoise happens to be; and you have the 
price for which true Navajo silver-work can be 
bought out on the Reserve. 

Among the Navajos, the women weave the blan- 
kets and baskets; among the Moki, the men, while 
the women are the great pottery makers. The value 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 129 

of these out on the Reserve is exactly in proportion 
to the intricacy of the work, the plain native wool 
colors — black, gray, white and brown — varying 
in price from seventy cents to $1.25 a pound; the 
fine bayetta or red weave, which is finer than any ma- 
chine can produce and everlasting in its durability, 
fetching pretty nearly any price the owner asks. 
Other colors than the bayetta red and native wool 
shades, I need scarcely say here, are in bought min- 
eral dyes. True bayettas, which are almost a lost 
art, bring as high as $1,500 each from a connoisseur. 
Other native wools vary in price according to size 
and color from $15 to $150. Off the Reserve, these 
prices are simply doubled. From all of which, it 
should be evident that no thrifty Navajo need be 
poor. His house costs nothing. It is made of cedar 
shakes stuck up in the ground crutchwise and wattled 
with mud. Strangely enough, the Navajo no longer 
uses his own blankets. They are too valuable; also, 
too heavy for the climate. He uses the cheap and 
gaudy Germantown patterns. 

At seven one morning in May, equipped with one 
of Mr. Hubbell's fastest teams and a good Mexican 
driver who knew the trail, we set out from Ganado 
for Keam's Canon. It need scarcely be stated here 
that in Desert travel you must carry your water keg, 
" grub " box and horse feed with you. All these, 
up to the present, Mr. Hubbell has freely supplied 
passersby ; but as travel increases through the Painted 
Desert, it is a system that must surely be changed, 



130 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

not because the public love Mr. Hubbell " less, but 
more." 

The morning air was pure wine. The hills were 
veiled In a lilac light — tones, half-tones, shades and 
subtle suggestions of subdued glory — with an al- 
most Alpine glow where the red sunrise came 
through notches of the painted peaks. Hogan after 
hogan, with sheep corrals in cedar shakes, we passed, 
where little boys and girls were driving the sheep 
and goats up and down from the watering places. 
Presently, as you drive northwestward, there swim 
through the opaline haze peculiar to the Desert, 
purplish-green forested peaks splashed with snow on 
the summit — the Francisco Mountains of Flagstaff 
far to the South; and you are on a high sagebrush 
mesa, like a gray sea, with miles, miles upon miles 
(for three hours you drive through it) of delicate, 
lilac-scented bloom, the sagebrush In blossom. I can 
liken It to nothing but the appearance of the sea 
at sunrise or sunset when a sort of misty lavender 
light follows the red glow. This mesa leads you 
into the cedar woods, an incense-scented forest far 
as you can see for hours and hours. You begin to 
understand how a desert has not only mountains and 
hills but forests. In fact, the northern belt of the 
Painted Desert comprises the Kaibab Forest, and the 
southern belt the Tusayan and Coconino Forests, 
the Mesas of the Mokl and Navajo Land lying like 
a wedge between these two belts. 

Then, towards midday, your trail has been drop- 
ping so gradually that you hardly realize it till you 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 131 

slither down a sand bank and find yourself between 
the yellow pumice walls of a blind cul-de-sac in the 
rock — nooning place — where a tiny trickle of 
pure spring water pours out of the upper angle of 
rock, forming a pool in a natural basin of stone. 
Here cowboys of the long-ago days, when this was 
a no-man's-land, have fenced the waters in from 
pollution and painted hands of blood on the walls 
of the cave roof above the spring. Wherever you 
find pools in the Desert, there the Desert silence is 
broken by life; unbroken range ponies trotting back 
and forward for a drink, blue jays and bluebirds 
flashing phantoms in the sunlight, the wild doves 
fluttering in flocks and sounding their mournful 
" hoo-hoo-hoo." 

This spring is about half of the fifty-five miles 
between Ganado and Keam's Canon; and the last 
half of the trail is but a continuance of the first: 
more lilac-colored mesas high above the top of the 
world, with the encircling peaks like the edge of an 
inverted bowl, a sky above blue as the bluest tur- 
quoise ; then the cedared lower hills redolent of ever- 
greens; a drop amid the pumice rocks of the lower 
world, and you are in Keam's Canon, driving along 
the bank of an arroyo trenched by floods, steep as a 
carved wall. You pass the ruins of the old govern- 
ment school, where the floods drove the scholars out, 
and see the big rock commemorating Kit Carson's 
famous fight long ago, and come on the new Indian 
schools where 150 litde Navajos and Mokis are be- 
ing taught by Federal appointees — schools as fine 



132 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

in every respect as the best educational institutions 
of the East. At the Agency Office here you must 
obtain a permit to go on into Moki Land; for the 
Three Mesas and Oraibi and Hotoville are the 
Ultima Thule of the trail across the Painted Desert. 
Here you find tribes completely untouched by civili- 
zation and as hostile to it (as the name Hotoville 
signifies) as when the Spaniard first came among 
them. In fact, the only remnants of Spanish influ- 
ence left at some of these mesas are the dwarfed 
peach orchards growing in the arid sands. These 
were planted centuries ago by the Spanish padres. 

The trading post managed by Mr. Lorenzo Hub- 
bell, Jr., at Keam's Canon is but a replica of his 
father's establishment at Ganado. Here is the same 
fine old Spanish hospitality. Here, too, is a rare 
though smaller collection of Western paintings. 
There are rugs from every part of the Navajo Land, 
and specimens of pottery from the Three Mesas — 
especially from Nampail, the wonderful woman pot- 
tery maker of the First Mesa — and fine silver-work 
gathered from the Navajo silversmiths. And with 
It all is the gracious perfection of the art that con- 
ceals art, the air that you are conferring a favor 
on the host to accept rest in a little rose-covered 
bower of two rooms and a parlor placed at the com- 
mand of guests. 

The last lap of the drive across the Painted Des- 
ert is by all odds the hardest stretch of the road, as 
well as the most interesting. It Is here the Mokis, 
or Hopi, have their reservation in the very heart 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 133 

of Navajo Land; and there will be no quarrel over 
possession of this land. It lies a sea of yellow sand 
with high rampant islands — 600, 1,000, 1,500 feet 
above the plains — of yellow tufa and white gypsum 
rock, sides as sheer as a wall, the top a flat plateau 
but for the crest where perch the Moki villages. Up 
the narrow acclivities leading to these mesa crests the 
Mokis must bring all provisions, all water, their 
ponies and donkeys. If they could live on atmos- 
phere, on views of a painted world at their feet 
receding to the very drop over the sky-line, with 
tones and half-tones and subtle suggestions of opaline 
snow peaks swimming in the lilac haze hundreds of 
miles away, you would not wonder at their choosing 
these eerie eagle nests for their cities; for the color- 
ing below is as gorgeous and brilliant as In the Grand 
Canon. But you see their little farm patches among 
the sand billows below, the peach trees almost up- 
rooted by the violence of the wind, literally and 
truly, a stone placed where the corn has been planted 
to prevent seed and plantlet from being blown away. 
Or If the Navajo still raided the Moki, you could 
understand them toiling like beasts of burden carry- 
ing water up to these hilltops; but the day of raid 
and foray is forever past. 

It was on our way back over this trail that we 
learned one good reason why the dwellers of this 
land must keep to the high rock crests. Crossing 
the high mesa, we had felt the wind begin to blow, 
when like Drummond's Habitant Skipper, " it blew 
and then It blew some more." By the time we 



134 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

reached the sandy plain below, such a hurricane had 
broken as I have seen only once before, and that 
was off the coast of Labrador, when for six hours 
we could not see the sea for the foam. The billows 
of sand literally lifted. You could not see the 
sandy plain for a dust fine as flour that wiped out 
every landmark three feet ahead of your horses' 
noses. The wheels sank hub deep in sand. Of 
trail, not a sign was left; and you heard the same 
angry roar as in a hurricane at sea. But like the 
eternal rocks, dim and serene and high above the 
turmoil, stood the First Mesa village of Moki Land. 
Perhaps after all, these little squat Pueblo Indians 
knew what they were doing when they built so high 
above the dust storms. Twice the rear wheels lifted 
for a glorious upset; but we veered and tacked and 
whipped the fagged horses on. For three hours the 
hurricane lasted, and when finally it sank with an 
angry growl and we came out of the fifteen miles of 
sand into sagebrush and looked back, the rosy tinge 
of an afterglow lay on the gray pile of stone where 
the Moki town crests the top of the lofty mesa. 

In justice to travelers and Desert dwellers, two 
or three facts should be added. Such dust storms 
occur only in certain spring months. So much In 
fairness to the Painted Desert. Next, I have 
cursorily given slight details of the Desert storm, 
because I don't want any pleasure seekers to think 
the Painted Desert can be crossed with the comfort 
of a Pullman car. You have to pay for your fun. 
We paid in that blinding, stinging, smothering blast 



ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 135 

as from a furnace, from three to half past five. 
Women are supposed to be irrepressible talkers. 
Well — we came to the point where not a soul in 
the carriage could utter a word for the dust. Lastly, 
when we saw that the storm was to be such a genuine 
old-timer, we ought to have tied wet handkerchiefs 
across our mouths. Glasses we had to keep the dust 
out of our eyes; but that dust is alkali, and it took 
a good two weeks' sneezing and a very sore throat 
to get rid of it. 

Of the Three Mesas and Oraibi and Hotoville, 
space forbids details except that they are higher than 
the village at Acoma. Overlooking the Painted 
Desert in every direction, they command a view that 
beggars all description and almost staggers thought. 
You seem to be overlooking Almighty God's own 
amphitheater of dazzlingly-colored infinity; and nat- 
urally you go dumb with joy of the beauty of it and 
lose your own personality and perspective utterly. 
We lunched on the brink of a white precipice 1,500 
feet above anywhere, and saw Moki women toiling 
up that declivity with urns of water on their heads, 
and photographed naked urchins sunning themselves 
on the baking bare rock, and stood above estiifas, 
or sacred underground council chambers, where the 
Pueblos held their religious rites before the coming 
of the Spaniards. 

Of the Moki towns, Oraibi is, perhaps, cleaner 
and better than the Three Mesas. The mesas are in- 
describably, unspeakably filthy. At Oraibi, you can 
wander through adobe houses clean as your own home 



136 ACROSS THE PAINTED DESERT 

quarters, the adobe hard as cement, the rooms di- 
vided into sleeping apartments, cooking room, meal 
bin, etc. Also, being nearer the formation of the 
Grand Caiion, the coloring surrounding the Mesa is 
almost as gorgeous as the Caiion. 

If it had not been that the season was verging on 
the summer rains, which flood the Little Colorado, 
we should have gone on from Oraibi to the Grand 
Caiion. But the Little Colorado is full of quicksands, 
dangerous to a span of a generous host's horses; 
so we came back the way we had entered. As we 
drove down the winding trail that corkscrews from 
Oraibi to the sand plain, a group of Moki women 
came running down the footpath and met us just as 
we were turning our backs on the Mesa. 

" We love you," exclaimed an old woman extend- 
ing her hand (the Government doctor interpreted 
for us), " we love you with all our hearts and have 
come down to wish you a good-by." 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GRAND CANON AND PETRIFIED FORESTS 

THE belt of National Forests west of the 
Painted Desert and Navajo Land comprises 
that strange area of onyx and agate known 
as the Petrified Forests, the upland pine parks of the 
Francisco Mountains round Flagstaff, the vast ter- 
ritory of the Grand Canon, and the western slope be- 
tween the Continental Divide and the Pacific. 

Needless to say, it takes a great deal longer to 
see these forests than to write about them. You 
could spend a good two weeks in each area, and then 
come away conscious that you had seen only the begin- 
nings of the wonders In each. For instance, the 
Petrified Forests cover an area of 2,000 acres that 
could keep you busy for a week. Then, when you 
think you have seen everything, you learn of some 
hieroglyphic inscriptions on a nearby rock, with let- 
tering which no scientist has yet deciphered, but with 
pictographs resembling the ancient Phoenician signs 
from which our own alphabet is supposed to be de- 
rived. Also, after you have viewed the canons and 
upland pine parks and snowy peaks and cliff dwell- 
ings round Flagstaff and have recovered from the 
surprise of learning there are upland pine parks and 
snowy peaks twelve to fourteen thousand feet high 
137 



138 THE GRAND CANON 

in the Desert, you may strike south and see the 
Aztec ruins of Montezuma's Castle and Monte- 
zuma's Well, or go yet farther afield to the Great 
Natural Bridge of Southern Arizona, or explore near 
Winslow a great crater-like cavity supposed to mark 
the sinking of some huge meteorite. 

Of the Grand Cafion little need be said here; not 
because there is nothing to say, but because all the 
superlatives you can pile on, all the scientific 
explanations you can give, are so utterly inadequate. 
You can count on one hand the number of men who 
have explored the whole length of the Grand Cafion 
— 200 miles — and hundreds of the lesser caiions 
that strike off sidewise from Grand Canon are still 
unexplored and unexploited. Then, when you cross 
the Continental Divide and come on down to the 
Angeles Forests in from Los Angeles, and the Cleve- 
land in from San Diego, you are in a poor-man's 
paradise so far as a camp holiday is concerned. For 
$3 a week you are supplied with tent, camp kit and 
all. If there are two of you, $6 a week will cover 
your holiday; and forty cents by electric car takes 
you out to your stamping ground. An average of 
200 people a month go out to one or other of the 
Petrified Forests. From Flagstaff, 100 people a 
month go in to see the cliff dwellings. Not less 
.^Jian 30,000 people a year visit the Grand Canon 
And 100,000 people yearly camp and holiday in the 
f^ngeles and Cleveland Forests. And we are but 
at the beginning of the discovery of our own Western 
Wonderland. Who shall say that the National 



THE GRAND CANON 139 

Forests are not the People's Playground of all 
America; that they do not belong to the East as 
much as to the West; that East and West are not 
alike concerned in maintaining and protecting them? 

You strike into the Petrified Forests from Adam- 
ana or Holbrook. Adamana admits you to one sec- 
tion of the petrified area, Holbrook to another — 
both equally marvelous and easily accessible. If 
you go out in a big tally-ho with several others in 
the rig, the charge will be from $1.50 to $2.50. If 
you hire a driver and fast team for yourself, the 
charge will be from $4 to $6. Both places have 
hotels, their charges varying from $1 and $1.50 in 
Holbrook, to $2 and $2.50 at Adamana. The hotel 
puts up your luncheon and water keg, and the trips 
can be made, with the greatest ease in a day. 

Don't go to the Petrified Forests expecting thrills 
of the big knock-you-down variety 1 To go from 
the spacious glories of the boundless Painted Desert 
to the little 2,000-acre area of the Petrified Forests 
is like passing from a big Turner or Watts canvas in 
the Tate Gallery, London, to a tiny study in blue 
mist and stars by Whistler. If you go looking for 
*' big " things you'll come away disappointed; but 
if like Tennyson and Bobby Burns and Words- 
worth, " the flower in the crannied wall " has as 
much beauty for you as the ocean or a mountain, 
you'll come away touched with the mystery of that 
Southwestern Wonderland quite as much as If you 
had come out of all the riotous intoxication of color 
in the Painted Desert. 



I40 THE GRAND CANON 

In fact, you drive across the southern rim of the 
Painted Desert to reach the Petrified Forests. You 
are crossing the aromatic, sagey-smelling dry plain 
pink with a sort of morning primrose light, when 
you come abruptly into broken country. A sandy 
arroyo trenches and cuts the plain here. A gravelly 
hillock hunches up there; and just when you are hav- 
ing an eye to the rear wheel brake, or glancing back 
to see whether the fat man is on the up or down 
side, your eye is caught by spangles of rainbow light 
on the ground, by huge blood-colored rocks the 
shape of a fallen tree with encrusted stone bark on 
the outside and wedges and slabs and pillars of pure 
onyx and agate in the middle. Somehow you think 
of that Navajo legend of the coyote spilling the stars 
on the face of the sky, and you wonder what marvel- 
maker among the gods of medicine-men spilled his 
huge bag of precious stone all over the gravel in 
this fashion. Then someone cries out, " Why, look, 
that's a tree ! " and the tally-ho spills its occupants 
out helter-skelter; and someone steps off a long 
blood-red, bark-incrusted column hidden at both ends 
in the sand, and shouts out that the visible part of 
the recumbent trunk is 130 feet long. There was 
a scientist along with us the day we went out, a man 
from Belgium in charge of the rare forests of Java; 
and he declared without hesitation that many of these 
prone, pillared giants must be sequoias of the same 
ancient family as California's groves of big trees. 
Think what that means! These petrified trees He 
so deeply buried in the sand that only treetops and 



W- 




THE GRAND CANON 141 

sections of the trunks and broken bits of small upper 
branches are visible. Practically no excavation has 
taken place beneath these hillocks of gravel and sand. 
The depth and extent of the forest below this ancient 
ocean bed are unknown. Only water — oceans and 
aeons of water — could have rolled and swept and 
piled up these sand hills. Before the Desert was an 
ancient sea; and before the sea was an ancient sequoia 
forest; and it takes a sequoia from six to ten thou- 
sand years to come to Its full growth ; and that about 
gets you back to the Ancient of Days busy In his 
Workshop making Man out of mud, and Earth out 
of Chaos. 

But there Is another side to the Petrified Forests 
besides a prehistoric, geologic one. Split one of the 
big or little pieces of petrified wood open, and you 
find pure onyx, pure agate, the colors of the rainbow, 
which every youngster has tried to catch In its hands, 
caught by a Master Hand and transfixed forever In 
the eternal rocks. Crosswise, the split shows the 
concentric circles of the wood grain In blues and 
purples and reds and carmines and golds and lilacs 
and primrose pinks. Split the stone longitudinally 
and you have the same colors In water-waves bril- 
liant as a diamond, hard as a diamond, so hard you 
can only break it along the grain of the ancient wood, 
so hard, fortunately, that It almost defies man-ma- 
chinery for a polish. This hardness has been a 
blessing in disguise; for before the Petrified Forests 
were made by Act of Congress a National Park, or 
Monument, the petrified wood was exploited com- 



142 THE GRAND CANON 

merclally and shipped away in carloads to be pol- 
ished. You can see some shafts of the polished 
specimens in any of the big Eastern museums; but 
it was found that the petrified wood required ma- 
chinery as expensive and fine as for diamonds to 
effect a hard polish, and the thing was not com- 
mercially possible ; so the Petrified Forests will never 
be vandalized. 

You lunch under a natural bridge formed by the 
huge shaft of a prone giant, and step off more fallen 
pillars to find lengths greater than 130 feet, and 
seat yourself on stump ends of a rare enough beauty 
for an emperor's throne; but always you come back 
to the first pleasures of a child — picking up the 
smaller pebbles, each pebble as if there had been 
a sun shower of rainbow drops and each drop had 
crystallized into colored diamonds. 

I said don't go to the Petrified Forests expecting 
a big thrill. Yet if you have eyes that really see, 
and go there after a rain when every single bit of 
rock is ashine with the colors of broken rainbows; 
or go there at high noon, when every color strikes 
back in spangles of light — there is something the 
matter with you if you don't have a big thrill with 
a capital " B." 

There is another pleasure on your trip to the 
Petrified Forests, which you will get if you know 
how, but completely miss if you don't. All these 
drivers to the Forests are old-timers of the days 
when Arizona was a No-Man's-Land. For instance, 
Al Stevenson, the custodian at Adamana, was one of 



THE GRAND CANON 143 

the men along with Commodore Owen of San Diego 
and Bert Potter of the Forestry Department, Wash- 
ington, who rescued Sheriff Woods of Holbrook 
from a lynching party in the old sheep and cattle 
war days. Stevenson can tell that story as few men 
know it; and dozens of others he can tell of the 
old, wild, pioneer days when a man had to be all 
man and fearless to his trigger tips, or cash in, and 
cash in quick. At Holbrook you can get the story 
of the Show-Low Ranch and all the $50,000 worth 
of stock won in a cut of cards ; or of how they hanged 
Stott and Scott and Wilson — mere boys, two of 
them in Tonto Basin, for horses which they didn't 
steal. All through this Painted Desert you are just 
on the other side of a veil from the Land of True 
Romance; but you'll not lift that veil, believe me, 
with a patronizing Eastern question. You'll find 
your way in, if you know how; and if you don't 
know how, no man can teach you. And at Adamana, 
don't forget to see the pictograph rocks. Then 
you'll appreciate why the scientists wonder whether 
the antiquity of the Orient Is old as the antiquity of 
our own America. 

Flagstaff, frankly, does not live up to its own op- 
portunities. It is the gateway to many Aztec ruins 
— much more easily accessible to the public than the 
Frijoles cave dwellings of New Mexico. Only nine 
miles out by easy trail are cliff dwellings in Walnut 
Canon. These differ from the Frijoles in not being 
caves. The ancient people have simply taken ad- 
vantage of natural arches high in the face of unseal- 



144 THE GRAND CANON 

able precipices and have bricked up the faces of 
these with adobe. As far as I know, not so much 
as the turn of a spade has ever been attempted in 
excavation. The debris of centuries Hes on the 
floors of the houses; and the adobe brick In front 
Is gradually crumbling and rolling down the preci- 
pice' Into Walnut Caiion. Nor is there any doubt 
but that slight excavation would yield discoveries. 
You find bits of pottery and shard In the debris piles; 
and the day we went out, five minutes' scratching 
over of one cliff floor unearthed bits of wampum 
shell that from the perforations had evidently been 
used as a necklace. The Forestry Service has a 
man stationed here to guard the old ruins; but the 
Government might easily go a step further and give 
him authority to attempt some slight restoration. 
You drive across a cinder plain from Flagstaff and 
suddenly drop down to a footpath that takes you to 
the brink of circling gray stone canons many hun- 
dreds of feet deep. Along the top ledges of these 
amid such rocks as mountain sheep might frequent 
are the cliff houses — hundreds and hundreds of 
them, which no one has yet explored. At the bot- 
tom of the lonely, silent, dark caiion was evidently 
once a stream; but no stream has flowed here in the 
memory of the white race; and the cliff houses give 
evidence of even greater age than the caves. 

Only forty-seven miles south of Flagstaff are 
Montezuma's Castle and Well. Drivers can be 
hired In Flagstaff to take you out at from $4 to $6 
a day; and there are ranch houses near the Castle 



THE GRAND CANON 145 

and the Well, where you can stay at very trifling 
cost, indeed. 

It comes as a surprise to see here at Flagstaff, 
wedged between the Painted Desert and the arid 
plains of the South, the snow-capped peaks of the 
Francisco Mountains ranging from 12,000 to 13,- 
000 feet high, an easy climb to the novice. Only 
twenty miles out at Oak Creek is one of the best 
trout brooks of the Southwest; and twenty-five miles 
out is a ranch house in a cool caiion where health 
and holiday seekers can stay all the year in the Verde 
Valley. It is from East Verde that you go to the 
Natural Bridge. The central span of this bridge 
is 100 feet from the creek bottom, and the creek 
itself deposits lime so rapidly that if you drop a 
stone or a hat down, it at once encrusts and petrifies. 
Also at Flagstaff is the famous Lowell Observatory. 
In fact, if Flagstaff lived up to its opportunities, if 
there were guides, cheap tally-hos and camp out- 
fitters on the spot, it could as easily have 10,000 
tourists a month as it now has between 100 and 200. 

When you reach the Grand Canon, you have come 
to the uttermost wonder of the Southwestern Won- 
der World. There is nothing else like it in America. 
There is nothing else remotely resembling it in the 
known world; and no one has yet been heard of who 
has come to the Grand Canon and gone away disap- 
pointed. If the Grand Caiion were in Egypt or the 
Alps, it is safe to wager it would be visited by every 
one of the 300,000 Americans who yearly throng 



146 THE GRAND CANON 

Continental resorts. As it is, only 30,000 people 
a year visit it; and a large proportion of them are 
foreigners. 

You can do the Canon cheaply, or you can do 
it extravagantly. You can go to it by driving across 
the Painted Desert, 200 miles; or motoring in from 
Flagstaff — a half-day trip ; or by train from Wil- 
liams, return ticket something more than $5. Or 
you can take your own pack horses, and ride in your- 
self; or you can employ one of the well known local 
trail makers and guides, like John Bass, and go off 
up the Canon on a camping trip of weeks or months. 

Once you reach the rim of the Cafion, you can 
camp under your own tent roof and cater your own 
meals. Or you may go to the big hotel and pay $4 
to $15 a day. Or you may get tent quarters at the 
Bright Angel Camp — $1 a day, and whatever you 
pay for your meals. Or you may join one of John 
Bass' Camps which will cost from $4 up, according 
to the number of horses and the size of your party. 

First of all, understand what the Grand Cafion is, 
and what it isn't. We ordinarily think of a canon 
as a narrow cleft or trench in the rocks, seldom more 
than a few hundred feet deep and wide, and very sel- 
dom more than a few miles long. The Grand Canon 
is nearly as long as from New York to Canada, as 
wide as the city of New York is long, and as deep 
straight as a plummet as the Canadian Rockies or 
lesser Alps are high. In other words, it is 217 
miles long, from thirteen to twenty wide, and has a 
straight drop a mile deep, or seven miles as the trail 



THE GRAND CANON 147 

zigzags down. You think of a canon as a great 
trench between mountains. This one is a colossal 
trench with side canons going off laterally its full 
length, dozens of them to each mile, like ribs along 
a backbone. Ordinarily, to climb a 7,000 foot 
mountain, you have to go up. At the Grand Canon, 
you come to the brink of the sagebrush plain and 
jump off — to climb these peaks. Peak after peak, 
you lose count of them in the mist of primrose fire 
and lilac light and purpling shadows. To climb 
these peaks, you go down, down 7,000 feet a good 
deal steeper than the ordinary stair and in places 
quite as steep as the Metropolitan Tower elevator. 
In fact, If the Metropolitan Tower and the Singer 
Building and the Flatiron and Washington's Shaft 
in the Capital City were piled one on top of an- 
other in a pinnacled pyramid, they would barely 
reach up one-seventh of the height of these massive 
peaks swimming in countless numbers in the color 
of the Cafion. 

So much for dimensions 1 Now as to time. If you 
have only one day, you can dive in by train in the 
morning and out by night, and between times go to 
Sunrise Point or — if you are a robust walker — 
down Bright Angel Trail to the bank of the Colo- 
rado River, seven miles. If you have two days 
at your disposal, you can drive out to Grand View 
— fourteen miles — and overlook the panorama of 
the Canon twenty miles in all directions. If you 
have more days yet at your disposal, there are good 
trips on wild trails to Dripping Springs and to Ger- 



148 THE GRAND CANON 

trude Point and to Cataract Canon and by aerial 
tram across the Colorado River to the Kaibab Pla- 
teau on the other side. In fact, if you stayed at the 
Grand Canon a year and were not afraid of trail- 
less trips, you could find a new view, a new wonder 
place, new stamping grounds each day. Remember 
that the Canon itself is 217 miles long; and it has 
lateral canons uncounted. 

When you reach El Tovar you are told two of 
the first things to do are take the drives — three 
miles each way — to Sunrise and to Sunset Points. 
Don't! Save your dollars, and walk them both. 
By carriage, the way leads through the pine woods 
back from the rim for three miles to each point. 
By walking, you can keep on an excellent trail close 
to the rim and do each in twenty minutes; for the 
foot trails are barely a mile long. Also by walk- 
ing, you can escape the loud-mouthed, bull-voiced 
tourist who bawls out his own shallow knowledge of 
erosion to the whole carriageful just at the moment 
you want to float away in fancy amid opal lights 
and upper heights where the Olympic and Hindoo 
and Norse gods took refuge when unbelief drove 
them from their old resorts. In fact, if you keep 
looking long enough through that lilac fire above 
seas of primrose mists, you can almost fancy those 
hoary old gods of Beauty and Power floating round 
angles of the massive lower mountains, shifting the 
scenes and beckoning one another from the wings 
of this huge amphitheater. The space-filling talker 
is still bawling out about " the mighty powers of 



THE GRAND CANON 149 

erosion " ; and a thin-faced curate is putting away a 
figure of speech about " Almighty Power " for his 
next sermon. Personally, I prefer the old pagan 
way of expressing these things in the short cut of a 
personifying god who did a smashing big business 
with the hammer of Thor, or the sea horses of Nep- 
tune or the forked lightnings of old loud-thundering 
Jove. 

You can walk down Bright Angel Trail to the 
river at the bottom of the Canon; but unless your 
legs have a pair of very good benders under the 
knees, you'll not be able to walk up that trail the 
same day, for the way down is steep as a stair and 
the distance is seven miles. In that case, better 
spend the night at the camp known as the Indian 
Gardens half-way down in a beautifully watered 
dell; or else have the regular dally party bring down 
the mules for you to the river. Or you can join 
the regular tourist party both going down and com- 
ing up. Mainly because we wanted to see the 
sunrise, but also because a big party on a narrow 
trail is always unsafe and a gabbling crowd on a 
beautiful trail Is always agony, two of us rose at 
four A. M. and walked down the trail during sunrise, 
leaving orders for a special guide to fetch mules 
down for us to the river. Space forbids details of 
the tramp, except to say it was worth the effort, 
twice over worth the effort in spite of knees that sent 
up pangs and protests for a week. 

It had rained heavily all night and the path was 
very slippery; but if rain brings out the colors of 



150 THE GRAND CANON 

the Petrified Forests, you can imagine what it does 
to sunrise in a sea of blood-red mountain peaks. 
Much of the trail is at an angle of forty-five de- 
grees; but it is wide and well shored up at the outer 
edge. The foliage lining the trail was dripping 
wet; and the sunlight struck back from each leaf In 
spangles of gold. An Incense as of morning wor- 
ship filled the air with the odor of cedars and cloves 
and wild nutmeg pinks and yucca bloom. There 
are many more birds below the Canon rim than 
above it; and the dawn was filled with snatches of 
song from bluebirds and yellow finches and water 
ousels, whose notes were like the tinkle of pure 
water. What looked like a tiny red hillock from the 
rim above Is now seen to be a mighty mountain, 
four, five, seven thousand feet from river to peak, 
with walls smooth as if planed by the Artificer of all 
Eternity. In any other place, the gorges between 
these peaks would be dignified by the names of 
canons. Here, they are mere wings to the main 
stage setting of the Grand Canon. We reached the 
Indian Garden's Camp In time for breakfast and 
rested an hour before going on down to the river. 
The trail followed a gentle descent over sand-hills 
and rocky plateaus at first, then suddenly it began 
to drop sheer in the section known as the Devil's 
Corkscrew. The heat became sizzling as you de- 
scended; but the grandeur grew more imposing from 
the stupendous height and sheer sides of the bril- 
liantly colored gorges and masses of shadows above. 
Then the Devil's Corkscrew fell into a sandy dell 



THE GRAND CANON 151 

where a tiny waterfall trickled with the sound of 
the voice of many waters in the great silence. A 
cloudburst would fill this gorge in about a jiffy; but 
a cloudburst Is the last thing on earth you need 
expect In this land of scant showers and no water. 
Suddenly, you turn a rock angle, and the yellow, 
muddy, turbulent flood of the Colorado swirls past 
you, tempestuous, noisy, sullen and dark, filling the 
narrow canon with the war of rock against water. 
What seemed to be mere foothills far above, now 
appear colossal peaks sheer up and down, penning 
the angry river between black walls. It was no 
longer hot. We could hear a thunder shower re- 
verberating back In some of the valleys of the 
Canon; and the rain falling between us and the red 
rocks was as a curtain to the scene shifting of those 
old earth and mountain and water gods hiding in 
the wings of the vast amphitheater. 

And If you want a wilder, more eery trail than 
down Bright Angel, go from Dripping Springs out 
to Gertrude Point, I know a great many wild 
mountain trails in the Rockies, North and South; 
but I have never known one that will give more 
thrills from Its sheer beauty and sheer daring. You 
go out round the ledges of precipice after precipice, 
where nothing holds you back from a fall 7,000 
feet straight as a stone could drop, nothing but the 
sure-footedness of your horse; out and out, round 
and round peak after peak, till you are on the tip 
top and outer edge of one of the highest mountains 
in the Canon. This Is the trail of old Louis 



152 THE GRAND CANON 

Boucher, one of the beauty-loving souls who first 
found his way Into the center of the Caiion and built 
his own trail to one of its grandest haunts. Louis 
used to live under the arch formed by the Dripping 
Springs; but Louis has long since left, and the trail 
is falling away and is now one for a horse that can 
walk on air and a head that doesn't feel the sensa- 
tions of champagne when looking down a straight 
7,000 feet into darkness. If you like that kind of 
a trail, take the trip; for it is the best and wildest 
view of the Canon; but take two days to It, and 
sleep at Louis' deserted camp under the Dripping 
Springs. Yet if you don't like a trail where you 
wonder If you remembered to make your will and 
what would happen If the gravel slipped from your 
horse's feet one of these places where the next turn 
seems to jump off into atmosphere, then wait; for 
the day must surely come when all of the Grand 
Canon's 217 miles will be made as easily and safely 
accessible to the American public as Egypt. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE governor's PALACE OF SANTA FE 

IT lies to the left of the city Plaza — a long, low, 
one-story building flanking the whole length of 
one side of the Plaza, with big yellow pine 
pillars supporting the arcade above the public walk, 
each pillar surmounted by the fluted architrave pe- 
culiar to Spanish-Moorish architecture. It is yellow 
adobe in the sunlight — very old, very sleepy, very 
remote from latter-day life, the most un-American 
thing in all America, the only governor's palace 
from Athabasca to the Gulf of Mexico, from Sitka 
to St. Lawrence, that exists to-day precisely as it 
existed one hundred years ago, two hundred years 
ago, three hundred years ago, four hundred years 
ago — back, back beyond that to the days when 
there were no white men in America. Uncover the 
outer plaster in the six-foot thickness of the walls 
in the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe, and what do 
you find? Solid adobe and brick? Not much! 
The walled-up, conical fireplaces and meal bins and 
corn caves of a pueblo people who lived on the site 
of modern Santa Fe hundreds of years before the 
Spanish founded this capital here in 1605. For 
years it has been a dispute among historians — 
Bandelier, Hodge, Twitchell, Governor Prince, Mr. 

153 



154 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

Reed — whether any prehistoric race dwelt where 
Santa Fe now stands. Only In the summer of 19 12, 
when It was necessary to replace some old beams and 
cut some arches through the six-foot walls was It 
discovered that the huge partitions covered In their 
centers walls antedating the coming of the Span- 
iards — walls with the little conical fireplaces of In- 
dian pueblos, with such meal bins and corn shelves 
as you find In the prehistoric cave dwellings. 

We have such a passion for destroying the old 
and replacing It with the new In America that you 
can scarcely place your hand on a structure In the 
New World that stands Intact as it was before 
the Revolution. We somehow or other take it for 
granted that these mute witnesses of ancient heroism 
have nothing to teach us with their mossed walls 
and low-beamed ceilings and dumb, majestic dignity. 

To this, the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe is the 
one and complete exception In America. It flanks 
the cottonwoods of the Plaza, yellow adobe In the 
sunlight — very old, very sleepy, very remote from 
latter-day life, but with a quaint, quiet atmosphere 
that travelers scour Europe to find. Look up to 
the vigas, or beams of the ceiling, yellowed and 
browned and mellowed with age. Those vigas 
have witnessed strange figures stalking the spacious 
halls below. If the ceiling beams could throw their 
memories on some moving picture screen, there 
would be such a panorama of varied personages as 
no other palace In the world has witnessed. Leave 
out the hackneyed tale of General Lew Wallace 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 155 

writing " Ben Hur " in a back room of tlie Palace; 
or the fact that three different flags flung their folds 
over old Santa Fe in a single century. He who 
knows anything at all about Santa Fe, knows that 
Spanish power gave place to Mexican, and the Mex- 
ican regime to American rule. Also, that General 
Lew Wallace wrote " Ben Hur " in a back room of 
the Palace, while he was governor of New Mexico. 
And you only have to use your eyes to know that 
Santa Fe, itself, is a bit of old Spain set down in 
the modern United States of America. The don- 
keys trotting to market under loads of wood, the 
ragged peon riders bestriding burros no higher than 
a saw horse, the natives stalking past in bright 
serape or blanket, moccasined and hatless — all 
tell you that you are in a region remote from latter- 
day America. 

But here is another sort of picture panorama 1 It 
is between 1680 and 1710. 

A hatless youth, swarthy from five years of terri- 
ble exposure, hair straight as a string, gabbling 
French but speaking no Spanish, a slave white traded 
from Indian tribe to Indian tribe, all the way from 
the Gulf of Mexico to the interior of New Spain, is 
brought before the viceroy. Do you know who he 
is? He is Jean L'Archeveque, the French-Canadian 
lad who helped to murder La Salle down on Trinity 
Bay in Texas. What are the French doing down 
on Trinity Bay? Do they Intend to explore and 
claim this part of America, too? In the abuses of 
slavery among the Indians for five years, the lad 



156 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

has paid the terrible penalty for the crime into which 
he was betrayed by his youth. He is scarred with 
wounds and beatings. He is too guilt-stricken ever 
to return to New France. His Information may be 
useful to New Spain; so he is enrolled In the guards 
of the Spanish Viceroy of Santa Fe; and he is sent 
out to San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, where he 
founds a family and where his records may be seen 
to this day. For those copy-book moralists who 
like to know that Divine retribution occasionally 
works out in daily life, it may be added that Jean 
L'Archeveque finally came to as violent a death as 
he had brought to the great French explorer, La 
Salle. 

Or take a panorama of a later day. It Is just 
before the fall of Spanish rule. The Governor sits 
In his Palace at Santa Fe, a mightier autocrat than 
the Pope In Rome; for, as the Russians say, " God is 
high In His Heavens," and the King is far away, 
and those who want justice in Santa Fe, must pay — 
pay — pay — pay In gold coin that can be put In 
the Iron chest of the viceroy. (You can see speci- 
mens of those Iron chests all through New Mexico 
yet — chests with a dozen secret springs to guard 
the family fortune of the hidden gold bullion.) A 
woman bursts into the presence of the Viceroy, and 
throws herself on her knees. It Is a terrible tale — 
the kind of tale we are too finical to tell In these 
modern days, though that Is not saying there are not 
many such tales to be told. The woman's young 
sister has married an officer of the Viceroy's ring. 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 157 

He has beaten her as he would a slave. He has 
treated her to vile indecencies of which only Hell 
keeps record. She had fled to her father; but the 
father, fearing the power of the Viceroy, had sent 
her back to the man; and the man has killed her 
with his brutalities. (I have this whole story from 
a lineal descendant of the family.) The woman 
throws back her rehozo, drops to her knees before 
the Viceroy, and demands justice. The Viceroy 
thinks and thinks. A woman more or less! What 
does it matter? The woman's father had been 
afraid to act, evidently. The husband is a member 
of the government ring. Interference might stir up 
an ugly mess — revelations of extortion and so on I 
Besides, justice Is worth so much per; and this 
woman — what has she to pay? This Viceroy will 
do nothing. The woman rises slowly, incredulous. 
Is this justice? She denounces the Viceroy In fiery, 
impassioned speech. The Viceroy smiles and twirls 
his mustachlos. What can a woman do? The 
woman proclaims her Imprecation of a court that 
fails of justice. (Do our courts fail of justice? Is 
there no lesson In that past for us?) Do you know 
what she did? She did what not one woman in a 
million could do to-day, when conditions are a thou- 
sand fold easier. She went back to her home. It 
was just about where the pretty Spanish house of 
Mr. Morley of the Archoeologlcal School stands to- 
day. She gathered up all the loose gold she could 
and bound it in a belt around her waist. Then she 
took the most powerful horse she had from the kraal. 



158 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

saddled him and rode out absolutely alone for the 
city of Old Mexico — 900 miles as the trail ran. 
Apaches, Comanches, Navajos, beset the way. She 
rode at night and slept by day. The trail was a 
desert waste of waterless, bare, rocky hills and quick- 
sand rivers and blistering heat. God, or the Virgin 
to whom she constantly prayed, or her own dauntless 
spirit, must have piloted the way; for she reached 
the old city of Mexico, laid her case before the 
King's representatives, and won the day. Her sis- 
ter's death was avenged. The husband was tried 
and executed: and the Viceroy was deposed. Most 
of us know of almost similar cases. I think of a 
man who has repeatedly tried for a federal judge- 
ship In New Mexico, who has literally been guilty 
of every crime on the human calendar. Yet we 
don't at risk of life push these cases to retribution. 
Is that one of the lessons the past has for us? Span- 
ish power fell in New Mexico because there came a 
time when there was neither justice nor retribution 
in any of the courts. 

Other panoramas there were beneath the age- 
mellowed beams of the Palace ceiling, panoramas 
of Comanche and Navajo and Ute and Apache 
stalking in war feathers before a Spanish governor 
clad in velvets and laces. Tradition has It that a 
Ute was once struck dead in the Governor's pres- 
ence. Certainly, all four tribes wrought havoc and 
raid to the very doors of the Palace. Within only 
the last century, a Comanche chief and his warriors 
came to Santa Fe demanding the daughter of a lead- 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 159 

Ing trader in marriage for the chief's son. The 
garrison was weak, in spite of fustian and rust>' 
helmets and battered breastplates and velvet doublets 
and boots half way to the waist — there were sel- 
dom more than 200 soldiers, and the pusillanimous 
Governor counseled deception. He told the Co- 
manche that the trader's daughter had died, and or- 
dered the girl to hide. The only peace that an 
Indian respects — or any other man, for that matter 
— is the peace that is a victory. The Indian sus- 
pected that the answer was the answer of the coward, 
a lie, and came back with his Comanche warriors. 
While the soldiers huddled inside the Palace walls, 
the tovv'n was raided. The trader was murdered 
and the daughter carried off to the Comanches, 
where she died of abuse. When these tragedies fell 
on daughters of the Pilgrims in New England, the 
Saxon strain of the warrior women in their blood 
rose to meet the challenge of fate; and they brained 
their captors with an ax; but no such warrior strain 
was in the blood of the daughters of Spain. By re- 
ligion, by nationality, by tradition, the Spanish girl 
was the purely convent product: womanhood pro- 
tected by a ten-foot wall. When the wall fell away, 
she was helpless as a hot-house flower set out amid 
violent winds. 

Diagonally across the Plaza from the Governor's 
Palace stands the old Fonda, or Exchange Hotel, 
whence came the long caravans of American traders 
on the Santa Fe Trail. Behind the Palace about a 
quarter of a mile, was the Gareta, a sort of com- 



i6o THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

bined custom house and prison. The combination 
was deeply expressive of Spanish rule in those early 
days, for independent of what the American's white- 
tented wagon might contain — baled hay or price- 
less silks or chewing tobacco — a duty of $500 was 
levied against each mule-team wagon of the Ameri- 
can trader. Did a trader protest, or hold back, he 
was promptly clapped in irons. It was cheaper to 
pay the duty than buy a release. The walls of 
both the Fonda and the Gareta were of tremendous 
thickness, four to six feet of solid adobe, which was 
hard as our modern cement. In the walls behind 
the Gareta and on the walls behind the Palace, pitted 
bullet holes have been found. Beneath the holes 
was embedded human hair. 

Nothing more picturesque exists in America's past 
than the panorama of this old Santa Fe Trail. 
Santa Fe was to the Trail what Cairo was to the 
caravans coming up out of the Desert in Egypt. 
Twltchell, the modern historian, and Gregg, the old 
chronicler of last century's Trail, give wonderfully 
vivid pictures of the coming of the caravans to the 
Palace. " As the caravans ascended the ridge which 
overlooks the city, the clamorings of the men and 
the rejoicings of the bull whackers could be heard 
on every side. Even the animals seemed to par- 
ticipate in the humor of their riders. I doubt 
whether the first sight of Jerusalem brought the 
crusaders more tumultuous and soul-enrapturing 

joy." 

We talk of the picturesque fur trade of the North, 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE i6i 

when brigades of birch canoes one and two hundred 
strong penetrated every river and lake of the wil- 
derness of the Northwest. Let us take a look at 
these caravan brigades of the traders of the South- 
west! Teams were hitched tandem to the white- 
tented wagons. Drivers did not ride In the wagons. 
They rode astride mule or horse, with long bull 
whips thick as a snake skin, which could reach from 
rear to fore team. I don't know how they do It; 
but when the drivers lash these whips out full length, 
they cause a crackling like pistol shots. The owner 
of the caravan was usually some gentleman adven- 
turer from Virginia or Kentucky or Louisiana or 
Missouri; but each caravan had Its captain to com- 
mand, and Its outriders to scout for Indians. These 
scouts were of every station In life with morals of 
as varied aspect as Joseph's coat of many colors. 
Kit Carson was once one of these scouts. Governor 
Bent was one of the traders. Stephen B. Elklns 
first came to New Mexico with a bull whacker's cara- 
van. In the morning, every teamster would vie 
with his fellows to hitch up fastest. Teams ready, 
he would mount and call back — "All's set." An 
uproar of whinnying and braying, the clank of 
chains, and then the captain's shout — " Stretch out," 
when the long line of twenty or thirty white-tented 
wagons would rumble out for the journey of thirty 
to sixty days across the plains. Each wagon had 
five yoke of oxen, with six or eight extra mule teams 
behind In case of emergency. About three tons 
made a load. Twenty miles was a good day's 



1 62 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

travel. Camping places near good water and pas- 
turage were chosen ahead by the scouts. Wagons 
kept together In groups of four. In case of attack 
by Comanche or Ute, these wagons wheeled into a 
circle for defense with men and beasts inside the 
extemporized kraal. Campfires were kept away 
from wagons to avoid giving target to foes. Blan- 
kets consisted of buffalo robes, and the rations " hard 
tack," pork and such game as the scouts and sharp- 
shooters could bring down. A favorite trick of 
Indian raiders was to wait till all animals were teth- 
ered out for pasturage, and then stampede mules 
and oxen. In the confusion, wagons would be 
overturned and looted. 

As the long white caravans came to their jour- 
ney's end at Santa Fe, literally the whole Spanish 
and Indian population crowded to the Plaza in front 
of the Palace. *' Los Americanos! Los Carros! 
La Caravana ! " — were the shouts ringing through 
the streets; and Santa Fe's perpetual siesta would 
be awakened to a week's fair or barter. Wagons 
were lined up at the custom house; and the trader 
presented himself before the Spanish governor, 
trader and governor alike dressed in their best regi- 
mentals. Very fair, very soft spoken, very pro- 
fuse of compliments was the interview; but divested 
of profound bows and flowery compliments, it ended 
in the American paying $500 a wagon, or losing his 
goods. The goods were then bartered at a stag- 
gering advance. Plain broadcloth sold at $25 a 
yard, linen at $4 a yard, and the price on other 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 163 

goods was proportionate. Goods taken in exchange 
were hides, wool, gold and silver bullion, Indian 
blankets and precious stones. 

Travelers from Mexico to the outside world went 
by stage or private omnibus with outriders and 
guards and sharpshooters. Young Spanish girls 
sent East to school were accompanied by such a 
retinue of defenders, slaves and servants, as might 
have attended a European monarch; and a whole 
bookful of stories could be written of adventures 
among the young Spanish nobility going out to see 
the world. The stage fare varied from $160 to 
$250 far as the Mississippi. Though Stephen B. 
Elkins went to New Mexico with a bull whacker's 
team, it was not long before he was sending gold 
bullion from mining and trading operations out to 
St. Louis and New York. How to get this gold 
bullion past the highwaymen who Infested the stage 
route, was always a problem. I know of one old 
Spanish lady, who yearly went to St. Louis to make 
family purchases and used to smuggle Elkins' gold 
out for him in belts and petticoats and disreputable 
looking old hand bags. Once, when she was going 
out in midsummer heat, she had a belt of her hus- 
band's drafts and Elkins' gold round her waist. 
The way grew hotter and hotter. The old lady 
unstrapped the buckskin reticule — looking, for all 
the world, like a woman's carry-all — and threw It 
up on top of the stage. An hour later, highwaymen 
" went through " the passengers. Rings, watches, 
jewels, coin were taken off the travelers; and the 



i64 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

mail bags were looted; but the bandits never thought 
of examining the old bag on top of the stage, in 
which was gold worth all the rest of the loot. 

In those days, gambling was the universal passion 
of high and low in New Mexico; and many a Span- 
ish don and American trader, who had taken over 
tens of thousands in the barter of the caravan, 
wasted it over the gaming table before dawn of the 
next day. The Fonda, or old Exchange Hotel, was 
the center of high play; but it may as well be ac- 
knowledged, the highest play of all, the wildest 
stakes were often laid in the Governor's Palace. 

Luckily, the passion for destroying the old has not 
Invaded Santa Fe. The people want their Palace 
preserved as it was, is, and ever shall be; and the 
recent restoration has been, not a reconstruction, but 
a taking away of all the modern and adventitious. 
Where modern pillars have been placed under the 
long front portico, they are being replaced by the 
old portal type of pillar — the fluted capital across 
the main column supporting the roof beams. This 
type of portal has come In such favor in New Mexico 
that It is being embodied In modern houses for ar- 
cades, porches and gardens. 

The main entrance of the Palace Is square In the 
center. You pass Into what must have been the 
ancient reception room leading to an audience cham- 
ber on the left. What amazes you Is the enormous 
thickness of these adobe walls. Each window case- 
ment Is wider than a bench; and an open door laid 
back is not wider than the thickness of the wall. 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 165 

To-day the reception hall and, Indeed, the rooms of 
the center Palace present some of the finest mural 
paintings In America. These have been placed on 
the walls by the Archaeological School of America 
which with the Historical Society occupies the main 
portions of the old building. You see drawings of 
the coming of the first Spanish caravels, of Coro- 
nado, of Don Diego de Vargas, who was the 
Frontenac of the Southwest, reconquering the prov- 
inces in 1680-94, about the same time that the great 
Frontenac was playing his part in French Canada. 
There are pictures, too, of the caravans crossing the 
plains, of the coming of American occupation, of 
the Moki and Hopi and Zuiil pueblos, of the Mis- 
sions of which only ruins to-day mark the sites in 
the Jemez, at Sandia, and away out in the Desert 
of Abo. 

To the left of the reception room is an excellent 
art gallery of Southwestern subjects. Here, artists 
of the growing Southwestern School send their work 
for exhibition and sale. It is significant that within 
the last few years prices have gone up from a few 
dollars to hundreds and thousands. Nausbaum's 
photographic work of the modern Indian Is one of 
the striking features of the Palace. Of course, 
there are pictures by Curtis and Burbank and Sharpe 
and others of the Southwestern School; but perhaps 
the most interesting rooms to the newcomer, to the 
visitor, who doesn't know that we have an ancient 
America, are those where the mural drawings are 
devoted to the cave dwellers and prehistoric races. 



1 66 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

These were done by Carl Lotave of Paris out on 
the ground of the ancient races. In conception and 
execution, they are among the finest murals in Amer- 
ica. 

Long ago, the Governor's Palace had twin tow- 
ers and a chapel. Bells in the old Spanish churches 
were not tolled. They were struck gong fashion 
by an attendant, who ascended the towers. These 
bells were cast of a very fine quality of old copper; 
and the tone was largely determined by the quality 
of the cast. Old Mission bells are scarce to-day in 
New Mexico; and collectors offer as high as $1,500 
and $3,000 for the genuine article. Vesper bells 
played a great part in the life of the old Spanish 
regime. Ladies might be promenading the Plaza, 
workmen busy over their tasks, gamblers hard at 
the wheel and dice. At vesper call, men, women 
and children dropped to knees; and for a moment 
silence fell, all but the caUing of the vesper bells. 
Then the bells ceased ringing, and life went on in 
its noisy stream. 

No account of the Governor's Palace would be 
complete without some mention of the marvels of 
dress among the dons and donas of the old regime. 
Could we see them promenading the Plaza and the 
Palace as they paraded their gayety less than half 
a century ago, we would Imagine ourselves in some 
play house of the French Court in its most luxurious 
days. Indians dressed then as they dress to-day, in 
bright-colored blankets fastened gracefully round hip 
and shoulders. Peons or peasants wore scrapes, 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 167 

blankets with a slit in the center, over the shoul- 
ders. Women of position wore not hats but the 
silk rebozo or scarf, thrown over the head with one 
end back across the left shoulder. On the street, 
the face was almost covered by this scarf. Pre- 
sumably the purpose was to conceal charms; but 
when you consider the combination of dark eyes and 
waving hair and a scarf of the finest color and tex- 
ture that could be bought in China or the Indies, it 
is a question whether that scarf did not set off what 
it was designed to conceal. About the shawls used 
as scarfs there is much misconception. These are 
not of Spanish or Mexican make. They come down 
in the Spanish families from the days when the ves- 
sels of the traders of Mexico trafficked with China 
and Japan. These old shawls to-day bring prices 
varying all the way from $200 to $2,000. 

The don of fashion dressed even more gayly than 
his spouse. Jewelry was a passion with both men 
and women; and the finest type of old jewelry in 
America to-day is to be found in New Mexico. 
The hat of the don was the wide-brimmed sombrero. 
Around this was a silver or gold cord, with a gold 
or silver cockade. The jackets were of colored 
broadcloth with buttons of silver or gold, not brass; 
but the trousers were at once the glory and the 
vanity of the wearer. Gold and silver buttons or- 
namented the seams of the legs from hip to knee. 
There were gold clasps at the garter and gold 
clasps at the knee. A silk sash with tasseled cords 
or fringe hanging down one side took the place of 



i68 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

modern suspenders. Leather leggings for outdoor 
wear were carved or embossed. A serape or velvet 
cape lined with bright-colored silk completed the 
costume. Bridles and horse trappings were gor- 
geous with silver, the pommel and stirrups being 
overlaid with it. The bridle was a barbarous silver 
thing with a bit cruel enough to control tigers; and 
the rowels of the spurs were two or three inches 
long. 

No, these were not people of French and Spanish 
courts. They were people of our own Western 
America less than a century ago; but though they 
were not people of the playhouse, as they almost 
seem to us, they are essentially a play-people. 
The Spaniard of the Southwest lived, not to work, 
but to play; and when he worked, it was only that 
he might play the harder. Los Americanos came 
and changed all that. They turned the Spanish 
play-world up side down and put work on top. 
Roam through the Governor's Palace I Call up the 
old gay life ! We undoubtedly handle more money 
than the Spanish dons and donas of the old days; 
but frankly — which stand for the more joy out of 
life; those laughing philosophers, or we modern 
work-demons? 



CHAPTER X 

THE governor's PALACE OF SANTA FE 
{Continued) 

OF all the traditions clinging round the old 
Palace at Santa Fe, those connected with 
Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of 
New Mexico, are best known and most picturesque. 
Yearly, for two and a quarter centuries, the people 
of New Mexico have commemorated De Vargas' 
victory by a procession to the church which he built 
in gratitude to Heaven for his success. This pro- 
cession is at once a great public festival and a sacred 
religious ceremony; for the image of the Virgin, 
which De Vargas used when he planted the Cross 
on the Plaza in front of the Palace and sang the 
Te Deum with the assembled Franciscan monks, is 
the same image now used in the theatrical proces- 
sion of the religious ceremony yearly celebrated by 
Indians, Spanish and Americans. 

The De Vargas procession is a ceremony unique 
in America. The very Indians, whose ancestors De 
Vargas' arms subjugated, now yearly reenact the 
scenes of the struggles of their forefathers to throw 
off white rule. Young Mexicans, descendants of 
the very officers who marched with De Vargas in 
his campaigns of 1692-3-4, take the part of the con- 
169 



170 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

quering heroes. Costumes, march, religious cere- 
monies of thanks, public festival — all have been 
kept as close to original historic fact as possible. 

De Vargas, himself, was to the Southwest what 
Frontenac was to French Canada — a bluff soldier 
animated by religious motives, who believed only in 
the peace that is a victory, put the fear of God in 
the hearts of his enemies, and built on that fear a 
superstructure of reverence and love. It need not 
be told that such a character rode rough-shod over 
official red-tape, and had a host of envious curs 
barking at his heels. They dragged him down, for 
a period of short eclipse, these Lilliputian enemies, 
just as Frontenac's enemies caused his recall by a 
charge of misusing public funds; but in neither case 
could the charges be sustained. Bluff warriors, not 
counting house clerks, were needed; and De Vargas, 
like Frontenac, came through all charges unscathed. 

The two heroes of America's Indian wars — 
Frontenac of the North, De Vargas of the South — 
were contemporaries. It will be remembered how 
up on the St. Lawrence and among the Mohawk 
tribes of New York, a wave of revolt against white 
man rule swept from 1642 to 1682. It was not un- 
natural that the red warrior should view with alarm 
the growing dominance and assumption of power on 
the part of the white. In Canada, we know the 
brandy of the white trader hastened the revolt and 
added horror to the outrages, when the settlements 
lying round Montreal and Quebec were ravaged and 
burnt under the very cannon mouths of the two im- 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 171 

potent and terrified forts. The same wave of 
revolt that scourged French Canada in the eighties, 
went like wild fire over the Southwest from 1682 
to 1694. Was there any connection between the 
two efforts to throw off white man rule? To the 
historian, seemingly, there was not; but ask the 
Navajo or Apache of the South about traders in 
the North, and you will be astonished how the tra- 
ditions of the tribes preserve legends of the Atha- 
bascan stock in the North, from whom they claim 
descent. Ask a modern Indian of the interior of 
British Columbia about the Navajos, and he will 
tell you how the wise men of the tribe preserve 
verbal history of a branch of this people driven far 
South — " those other Denes," he will tell you. 
Traders explain the wonderful way news has of 
traveling from tribe to tribe by the laconic expres- 
sion, " moccasin telegram." 

Whether or not the infection of revolt spread by 
" moccasin telegram " from Canada to Mexico, the 
storm broke, and broke with frightful violence over 
the Southwest. The immediate cause v/as religious 
interference. All pueblo people have secret lodges 
held in underground estufas or kivas. To these 
ceremonies no white man however favored is ever 
admitted. White men know as little of the rites 
practiced in these lodges by the pueblo people as 
when Coronado came in 1540. To the Spanish 
governors and priests, the thing was anathema — 
abomination of witchcraft and sorcery and secrecy 
that risked the eternal damnation of converts' souls. 



172 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

There was a garrison of only 250 men at the Pal- 
ace; yet already the church boasted fifty friars, from 
eleven to seventeen missions, and converts by the 
thousands. But the souls of the holy padres were 
sorely tried by these estiifa rites, " platicas de 
nochey " night conversations " — the priests called 
them. Well might all New Spain have been dis- 
turbed by these " night conversations." The sub- 
ject bound under fearful oath of secrecy was nothing 
more nor less than the total extermination of every 
white man, woman and child north of the Rio 
Grande. 

Some unwise governor — Trevino, I think it was 
— had issued an edict in 1675 forbidding the 
pueblos to hold their secret lodges in the estufas. 
By way of enforcing his edict, he had forty-seven 
of the wise men or Indian priests (he called them 
"sorcerers") imprisoned; hanged three in the jail 
yard of the Palace as a warning, and after severe 
whipping and enforced fasts, sent the other forty- 
four home. Picture the situation to yourself I The 
wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old 
men elected out of respect for their superior wis- 
dom, men used to having their slightest word im- 
plicitly obeyed. Whipped, shamed, disgraced, they 
dispersed from the Palace, down the Rio Grande 
to Isleta, west to the city on the impregnable rocks 
of Acoma, north to that whole group of pueblo cities 
from Jemez to Santa Fe and Pecos and Taos. 
What do you think they did? Fill up the under- 
ground estufas and hang their heads in shame among 




This ancient adobe gateway is among the landmarks of 
Santa Fe 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 173 

men? Then, you don't know the Indian! You 
may break his neck; but you can't bend it. The 
very first thing they did was to gather their young 
warriors in the estiifas. Picture that scene to your- 
self, too! An old rain priest at San Ildefonso, 
through the kindness of Dr. Hewitt of the Archae- 
ological School, took us down the estufa at that 
pueblo, where some of the bloodiest scenes of the 
rebellion were enacted. Needless to say, he took 
us down in the day time, when there are no cere- 
monies. 

The estufa is large enough to seat three or four 
hundred men. It is night time. A few oil tapers 
are burning in stone saucers, the pueblo lamp. The 
warriors come stealing down the ladder. No 
woman Is admitted. The men are dressed in linen 
trousers with colored blankets fastened Grecian 
fashion at the waist. They seat themselves silently 
on the adobe or cement benches around the circular 
wall. The altar place, whence comes the Sacred 
Fire from the gods of the under world, is situated 
just under the ladder. The priests descend, four 
or five of them, holding their blankets in a square 
that acts as a drop curtain concealing the altar. 
When all have descended, a trap door of brush 
above is closed. The taper lamps go out. The 
priests drop their blankets; and behold on the altar 
the sacred fire; and the outraged wise man in im- 
passioned speech denouncing white man rule, insult 
to the Indian gods, destruction of the Spanish ruler'! 

Of the punished medicine men, one of the most 



174 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

incensed was an elderly Indian called Pope, said to 
be originally from San Juan, but at that time living 
in Taos. I don't know what ground there is for it, 
but tradition has it that when Pope effected the cur- 
tain drop round the sacred fire of the estufa in Taos, 
he produced, or induced the warriors looking on 
breathlessly to believe that he produced, three In- 
fernal spirits from the under world, who came from 
the great war-god Montezuma to command the 
pueblo race to unite with the Navajo and Apache 
in driving the white man from the Southwest. If 
there be any truth in the tradition, it is not hard to 
account for the trick. Tradition or trick, it worked 
like magic. The warriors believed. Couriers went 
scurrying by night from town to town, with the 
knotted cord — some say It was of deer thong, 
others of palm leaf. The knots represented the 
number of days to the time of uprising. The man, 
for instance, who ran from Taos to Pecos, would 
pull out a knot for each day he ran. A new courier 
would carry the cord on to the next town. There 
was some confusion about the untying of those knots. 
Some say the rebellion was to take place on the i ith 
of August, 1682; others, on the 13th. Anyway, 
the first blow was struck on the loth. Not a pueblo 
town failed to rally to the call, as the Highlanders 
of old responded to the signal of the bloody cross. 
New Mexico at this time numbered some 3,000 
Spanish colonists, the majority living on ranches up 
and down the Rio Grande and surrounding Santa 
Fe. The captain-general, who had had nothing to 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 175 

do with the foolish decrees that produced the revolt, 
happened to be Don Antonio de Otermin, with 
Alonzo Garcia as his lieutenant. In spite of no 
women being admitted to the secret, the secret leaked 
out. Pope's son-in-law, the governor of San Juan, 
was setting out to betray the whole plot to the 
Spaniards, when he was killed by Pope's own hand. 

Such widespread preparations could not proceed 
without the Mission converts getting some inkling; 
and on August 9, Governor Otermin heard that two 
Indians of Tesuque out from Santa Fe had been 
ordered to join a rebellion. He had the Indians 
brought before him in the audience chamber on the 
loth. They told him all they knew; and they 
warned him that any warrior refusing to take part 
would be slain. Here, as always in times of great 
confusion, the main thread of the story is lost in a 
multiplicity of detail. Warning had also come 
down from the alcalde at Taos. Otermin scarcely 
seems to have grasped the import of the news ; for 
all he did was to send his own secret scouts out, 
warning the settlers and friars to seek refuge in 
Isleta, or Santa Fe; but it was too late. The In- 
dians got word they had been betrayed and broke 
loose in a mad lust of revenge and blood that very 
Saturday when the governor was sending out his 
spies. 

It would take a book to tell the story of all the 
heroism and martyrdom of the different Missions. 
Parkman has told the story of the martyrdom of the 
Jesuits in French Canada; and many other books 



176 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

have been written on the subject. No Parkman has 
yet risen to tell the story of the martyrdom of the 
Franciscans In New Mexico. In one fell day, be- 
fore the captain-general knew anything about it, 400 
colonists and twenty-one missionaries had been slain 
— butchered, shot, thrown over the rocks, suffo- 
cated in their burning chapels. Pope was in the 
midst of it all, riding like an Incarnate fury on 
horseback wearing a bull's horn In the middle of his 
forehead. Apaches and Navajos, of course, joined 
in the loot. At Taos, out of seventy whites, two 
only escaped; and they left their wives and children 
dead on the field and reached Isleta only after ten 
days' wandering in the mountains at night, having 
hidden by day. At little Tesuque, north of Santa 
Fe, only the alcalde escaped by spurring his horse 
to wilder pace than the Indians could follow. The 
alcalde had seen the friar flee to a ravine. Then 
an Indian came out wearing the priest's shield; and 
it was blood-spattered. At Santa Clara, soldiers, 
herders and colonists were slain on the field as they 
worked. The women and children were carried off 
to captivity from which they never returned. At 
Galisteo, the men were slain, the women carried off. 
Rosaries were burned in bonfires. Churches were 
plundered and profaned. At Santo Domingo, the 
bodies of the three priests were piled in a heap in 
front of the church, as an insult to the white man 
faith that would have destroyed the Indian estufas. 
Down at Isleta, Garcia, the lieutenant, happened to 
be in command, and during Saturday night and Sun- 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 177 

day morning, he rounded inside the walls of Isleta 
seven missionaries and 1,500 settlers, of whom only 
200 had firearms. 

What of Captain-General Otermin, cooped up in 
the Governor's Palace of Santa Fe, awaiting the re- 
turn of his scouts? The reports of his scouts, one 
may guess. Reports came dribbling in till Tues- 
day, and by that time there were no Spanish left 
alive outside Santa Fe and Isleta. Then Otermin 
bestirred himself mightily. Citizens were called to 
take refuge in the Palace. The armory was opened 
and arquebuses handed out to all who could bear 
arms. The Holy Sacrament was administered. 
Then the sacred vessels were brought to the Gov- 
ernor's Palace and hidden. There were now 1,000 
persons cooped up in the Governor's Palace, less 
than 100 capable of bearing arms. Trenches were 
dug, windows barricaded, walls fortified. Armed 
soldiers mounted the roofs of houses guarding the 
Plaza and in the streets approaching it were sta- 
tioned cannon. 

Having wiped out the settlements, the pueblos and 
their allies swooped down on Santa Fe, led by Juan 
of Galisteo riding with a convent flag round his 
waist as sash. To parley with an enemy is folly. 
Otermin sent for Juan to come to the Palace; and 
in the audience chamber upbraided him. Juan, one 
may well believe, laughed. He produced two 
crosses — a red one and a white one. If the 
Spaniards would accept the white one and withdraw, 
the Indians would desist from attack: if not — 



178 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

then — red stood for blood. Otermin talked about 
" pardon for treason," when he should have struck 
the impudent fellow to earth, as De Vargas, or old 
Frontenac, would have done In like case. 

When Juan went back across the Plaza, the In- 
dians howled with joy, danced dervish time all night, 
rang the bells of San Miguel, set fire to the church 
and houses, and cut the water supply off from the 
yard of the Palace. The valor of the Spaniards 
could not have been very great from August 14th 
to 20th, for only five of the 100 bearing arms were 
killed. At a council of war on the night of August 
19th, it was decided to attempt to rush the foe, 
trampling them with horses, and to beat a way open 
for retreat. Otermin says 300 Indians were killed 
in this rally; but it is a question. The Governor 
himself came back with an arrow wound in his fore- 
head and a flesh wound near his heart. Within 
twenty-four hours, he decided — whichever way you 
like to put it — " to go to the relief of Isleta," where 
he thought his lieutenant was; or "to retreat" 
south of the Rio Grande. The Indians watched 
the retreat in grim silence. The Spanish consid- 
ered their escape " a miracle." It was a pitiful 
wresting of comfort from desperation. 

But at Isleta, the Governor found that his 
lieutenant had already retreated taking 1,500 
refugees in safety with him. It was the end of 
September when Otermin himself crossed the Rio 
Grande, at a point not far from modern El Paso. 
At Isleta, the people will tell you to this day legends 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 179 

of the friar's martyrdom. Every Mexican believes 
that the holy padre buried in a log hollowed out for 
coffin beneath the chapel rises every ten years and 
walks through the streets of Isleta to see how his 
people are doing. Once every ten years or so, the 
Rio Grande floods badly; and the year of the flood, 
the ghost of the friar rises to warn his people. Be 
that as it may, a few years ago, a deputation of 
investigators took up the body to examine the truth 
of the legend. It lies in a state of perfect preserva- 
tion in its log coflin. 

The pueblos had driven the Spanish south of the 
Rio Grande and practically kept them south of the 
Rio Grande for ten years. Churches were burned. 
Images were profaned. Priestly vestments decked 
wild Indian lads. Converts were washed in Santa 
Fe River to cleanse them of baptism. All the 
records in the Governor's Palace were destroyed, 
and the Palace itself given over to wild orgies 
among the victorious Indians; but the victory 
brought little good to the tribes. They fell back 
to their former state of tribal raid and feud. 
Drought spoiled the crops; and perhaps, after all, 
the consolation and the guidance of the Spanish 
priests were missed. When the Utes heard that the 
Spanish had retreated, these wild marauders of the 
northern desert fell on the pueblo towns like wolves. 
There is a legend, also, that at this time there were 
great earthquakes and many heavenly signs of dis- 
pleasure. Curiously enough, the same legends exist 
about Montreal and Quebec. Otermin hung tim- 



1 80 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

idly on the frontier, crossing and recrossing the Rio 
Grande; but he could make no progress in re- 
settling the colonists. 

Comes on the scene now — 1692-98 — Don 
Diego de Vargas. It isn't so much what he did; for 
when you are brave enough, you don't need to do. 
The doors of fate open before the golden key. He 
resubjugated the Southwest for Spain; and he re- 
subjugated it as much by force of clemency as force 
of cruelty. But mark the point — it was force that 
did it, not pow-wowing and parleying and straddling 
cowardice with conscience. De Vargas could muster 
only 300 men at El Paso, including loyal Indians. 
On August 21, 1692, he set out for the north. 

It has taken many volumes to tell of the victories 
of Frontenac. It would take as many again to re- 
late the victories of De Vargas. He was accom- 
panied, of course, by the fearless and quenchless 
friars. All the pueblos passed on the way north 
he found abandoned; but when he reached Santa 
Fe on the 13th of September, he found It held and 
fortified by the Indians. The Indians were furi- 
ously defiant; they would perish, but surrender — 
never! De Vargas surrounded them and cut off 
the water supply. The friars approached under 
flag of truce. Before night, Santa Fe had sur- 
rendered without striking a blow. One after 
another, the pueblos were visited and pacified; but 
It was not all easy victory. The Indians did not 
relish an order a year later to give up occupation 
of the Palace and retire to their own villages. In 



^ 



THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE i8i 

December they closed all entrances to the Plaza and 
refused to surrender. De Vargas had prayers read, 
raised the picture of the Virgin on the battle flag, 
and advanced. Javelins, boiling water, arrows, as- 
sailed the advancing Spaniards; but the gate of the 
Plaza stockade was attacked and burned. Rein- 
forcements came to the Indians, and both sides rested 
for the night. During the night, the Indian gov- 
ernor hanged himself. Next morning, seventy of 
the Indians were seized and court-martialed on the 
spot. De Vargas planted his flag on the Plaza, 
erected a cross and thanked God, 

One of the hardest fights of '94 was out on the 
Black Mesa, a huge precipitous square of basalt, 
frowning above San Ildefonso. This mesa was a 
famous prayer shrine to the Indians and is venerated 
as sacred to this day. All sides are sheer but that 
towards the river. Down this is a narrow trail like 
a goat path between rocks that could be hurled on 
climbers' heads. De Vargas stormed the Black 
Mesa, on top of which great numbers of rebels had 
taken refuge. Four days the attack lasted, his 100 
soldiers repeatedly reaching the edge of the summit 
only to be hurled down. After ten days the siege 
had to be abandoned, but famine had done Its work 
among the Indians. For five years, the old general 
slept in his boots and scarcely left the warpath. It 
was at the siege of the Black Mesa that he is said 
to have made the vow to build a chapel to the Vir- 
gin; and It Is his siege of Sante Fe that the yearly 
De Vargas Celebration commemorates to this day. 



1 82 THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE 

And in the end, he died in his boots on the march at 
Bernalillo, leaving in his will explicit directions that 
he should be buried in the church of Santa Fe 
" under the high altar beneath the place where the 
priest puts his feet when he says mass." The body 
was carried to the parish church in his bed of state 
and interred beneath the altar; and the De Vargas 
celebration remains to this day one of the quaintest 
ceremonies of the old Governor's Palace. 



CHAPTER XI 

TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND AND ANCIENT CAPITAL 
OF THE SOUTHWEST 

AS Quebec is the shrine of historical pilgrims 
In the North, and Salem In New England; 
so Taos Is the Mecca of students of history 
and lovers of art In the Southwest. Here came the 
Spanish knights mounted and in armor plate half a 
century before the landing of the Pilgrims on 
Plymouth Rock. They had not only crossed the 
sea but had traversed the desert from Old Mexico 
for 900 miles over burning sands, amid wild, bare 
mountains, across rivers where horses and riders 
swamped in the quicksands. To Taos came Fran- 
ciscan padres long before Champlain had built stock- 
ades at Port Royal or Quebec. Just as the Jesuits 
won the wilderness of the up-country by martyr 
blood, so the Franciscans attacked the strongholds 
of paganism amid the pueblos of the South. 
Spanish conquistadores have been represented as 
wading through blood to victory, with the sword in 
one hand, the cross In the other; but that picture Is 
only half the truth. Let it be remembered that the 
Spanish were the only conquerors In America who 
gave the Indians perpetual title. Intact and forever, 
to the land occupied when the Spanish came — 
183 



1 84 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

which titles the Indians hold to this day. Also, 
while rude soldiers, or even officers, might be guilty 
of such unprovoked attacks as occurred at Bernalillo 
in Coronado's expedition of 1540, the crown stood 
sponsor for the well-being and salvation of the In- 
dian's soul. Wherever the conqueror marched, the 
sandaled and penniless Franciscan remained and too 
often paid the penalty of the soldier's crimes. In 
the Tusayan Desert, at Taos, at Zuni, at Acoma, 
you will find Missions that date back to the expedi- 
tion of Coronado; and at every single Mission the 
padres paid for their courage and their faith with 
their lives. 

But Taos traditions date back farther than the com- 
ing of the white man. Christians have their Christ, 
northern Indians their Hiawatha, and the pueblo 
people their Bah-tah-ko, or grand cacique, who led 
their people from the ravages of Apache and Navajo 
in the far West to the Promised Land of verdant 
plains and watered valleys below the mighty moun- 
tains of Taos. Montezuma was to the Southwest, 
not the Christ, but the Adam, the Moses, the 
Joseph. Casa Grande in southern Arizona was the 
Garden of Eden, " the place of the Morning Glow; " 
but when war and pestilence and ravaging foe and 
drouth drove the pueblos from their Garden of 
Eden, the Bah-tah-ko was the Moses to lead them 
to the Promised Land at Taos. When did he live? 
The oldest man does not know. The pueblos had 
been at Taos thousands of years, when the Spanish 
came in 1540; and, it may be added, they live very 



TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 185 

much the same to-day at Taos as they did when the 
white man first came. The men wear store trousers 
instead of woven linen ones; some wear hats instead 
of a red head band; and there are wagons instead of 
drags attached to a dog in shafts. But apart from 
these innovations, there is little difference at Taos 
between 19 12 and 1540. The whitewashed Mis- 
sion church stands in the center of the pueblo; but 
the old estufas, or kivas, are still used for religious 
ceremony, and election of rulers, and maintenance 
of Indian law. You can still see the Indians thresh- 
ing their grain by the trampling of goats on a 
threshing floor, or the run of burros round and 
round a kraal chased by a boy, while a man scrapes 
away the grain and forks aside the chaff. There 
are white man's courts and white man's laws, down 
at the white man's town of Taos; but the Indian has 
little faith in, and less respect for, these white man 
courts and laws, and out at Taos has his own court, 
his own laws, his own absolute and undisputed gov- 
ernor, his own police, his own prison and his own 
penalties. The wealth of Midas would not tempt 
a Taos Indian to exchange his life in the tiered 
adobe villages for all that civilization could offer 
him. Occasionally a Colonel Cody, or Showman 
Jones, lures him off for a year or two to the great 
cities of the East; but the call of the wilds lures him 
back to his own beehive houses. He has plenty to 
eat and plenty to wear, the love of his family, the 
open fields and the friendship of his gods — what 
ijipre can life offer? 



1 86 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

Don't leave the Southwest without seeing Taos. 
It might be part of Turkey, or Persia, or India. It 
is the most un-American thing in America; and yet, 
it is the most typical of those ancient days in 
America, when there was no white man. Just here, 
before the ethnologist arises to correct me, let it be 
put on record that the X^os people do not consider 
themselves Indians. They claim descent rather 
from the Aztecs, or Toltecs of the South. While 
the Navajo and Apache and Ute legends are of a 
great migration from Athabasca of the North, the 
pueblo legend is of a coming from the Great Under- 
world of the South. 

The easiest way to reach Taos is by the ancient 
city of Santa Fe. You go by rail to Servilleta, or 
Barrancas, then stage it out to the Indian pueblos. 
Better wire for your stage accommodation from the 
railroad. We did not wire, and when we left the 
railroad, we found seven people and a stage with 
space for only four. The railroad leads almost 
straight north from Santa Fe over high, clear mesas 
of yellow ocher covered with scrub juniper. There 
is little sign of water after you leave the Rio Grande, 
for water does not flow uphill; and you are at an 
altitude of 8,000 feet when you cross the Divide. 
You pass through fruit orchards along the river, low 
headed and heavy with apples. Then come the In- 
dian villages, San Ildefonso, and Espariola, and 
Santa Clara, where the strings of red chile bake in 
the sunlight against the glare adobe. Women go 



TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 187 

up from the pools with jars of water on their heads. 
Children come selling the famous Santa Clara black 
pottery at the train windows; and on the trail across 
the river, you see Mexican drovers with long lines 
of burros and pack horses winding away into the 
mountains. Women and girls in bright blankets 
and with eyes like black beads and skin like wrinkled 
parchment stand round the doors of the little square 
adobe houses; and sitting in the shade are the old 
people — people of a great age, 104 one old woman 
numbered her years. As you ascend the Upper 
Mesas of the Rio Grande, you are in a region where 
nothing grows but piiion and juniper. There is not 
a sign of life but the browsing sheep and goats. 
Just where the train shoots in north of San Ildefonso, 
if you know where to look on the right, you can see 
the famous Black Mesa, a huge square of black 
basaltic rock almost 400 feet high, which was the 
sacred shrine of all Indians hereabouts for a hun- 
dred miles. On its crest, you can still see its prayer 
shrines, and the footworn path where refugees from 
war ran down to the river for water from encamp- 
ment on the crest. Away to the left, the moun- 
tains seem to crumple up in purple folds with flat 
tops and white gypsum gashed precipices. One of 
these gashes — White Rock Canon — marks Paja- 
rito Plateau, the habitat of the ancient cave 
dwellers. On the north side of the Black Mesa, 
you can see the opening to a huge cave. This was 
a prayer shrine and refuge in time of war for the 
Santa Clara Indians. 



1 88 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

Then, when you have reached almost the top of 
the world and see no more sheep herds, the trains 
pull up at an isolated, forsaken little station; and 
late in the afternoon you get off at Servilleta. 

A school teacher, his wife and his two children, 
also left the train at this point. Our group con- 
sisted of three. The driver of the stage — a 
famous frontiersman, Jo. Dunn — made eight; and 
we packed into a two-seated vehicle. It added 
piquancy, if not sport, to the twilight drive to know 
that one of the two bronchos in harness had never 
been driven before. He was, in fact, one of the 
bands of wild horses that rove these high juniper 
mountains. Mexicans, or Indians, watch for the 
wild bands to come out to water at nightfall and 
morning, and stampede them into a pound, or rope 
them. The captive is then sold for amounts vary- 
ing from $5 to $15 to anyone who can master him. 
It need not be told here, not every driver can master 
an unbroken wild horse. It is a combination of 
confidence and dexterity, rather than strength. 
There is a rigging to the bridle that throws a horse 
if he kicks; and our wild one not only kept his traces 
for a rough drive of nearly twenty miles but suf- 
fered himself to be handled by a young girl of the 
party. 

Twilight on the Upper Mesas is a thing not to 
be told in words and only dimly told on canvas. 
There Is the primrose afterglow, so famous in the 
Alps. The purple mountains drape themselves in 
lavender veils. Winds scented with oil of sage- 



f 







f *■ 












* ' - . .1 - 









TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 189 

brush and aroma of pines come soughing through 
the juniper hills. The moon comes out sickle- 
shaped. You see a shooting star drop. Then a 
dim white group of moving forms emerges from the 
pines of the mountains — wild horses with leader 
scenting the air for foe, coming out for the night 
run to the drinking pools. Or your horses give a 
little sidewise jump from the trail, and you see a 
coyote loping along abreast not a gun-shot away. 
This is a sure-enough-always-no-man's-land, a jump- 
ing-off place for all the earth — too high for irri- 
gation farming, too arid for any other kind of farm- 
ing, and so an unclaimed land. In the twenty-mile 
drive, you will see, perhaps, three homesteaders' 
shanties, where settlers have fenced off a square and 
tried ranching; but water Is too deep for boring. 
Horses turned outside the square join the wild bands 
and are lost; and two out of every three are aban- 
doned homesteads. The Dunn brothers have cut 
a road in eighteen miles to the Arroyo Hondo, 
where their house is, halfway to Taos; and they 
have also run a telephone line in. 

Except for the telephone wires and the rough 
trail, you might be in an utterly uninhabited land on 
top of the world. The trail rises and falls amid 
endless scented juniper groves. The pale moon 
deepens through a pink and saffron twilight. The 
stillness becomes almost palpable — then, suddenly, 
you jump right off the edge of the earth. The flat 
mesa has come to an edge. You look down, sheer 
down, 1,000 feet straight as a plummet — two 



I90 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

canons narrow as a stone's toss have gashed deep 
trenches through the hving rocks and with a whir 
of swift waters come together at the famous place 
known as the Bridge. You have come on your old 
friend the Rio Grande again, narrow and deep and 
blue from the mountain snows, an altogether dif- 
ferent stream from the muddy Rio of the lower 
levels. Here it is joined by the Arroyo Hondo, 
another cafion slashed through the rocks in a deep 
trench — both rivers silver in the moonlight, with a 
rush of rapids coming up the great height like wind 
in trees, or the waves of the sea. 

What a host of old frontier worthies must have 
pulled themselves up with a jerk of amaze and dumb 
wonder, when they first came to this sheer jump off 
the earth! First the mailed warriors under Cor- 
onado; then the cowled Franciscans; then Fremont 
and Kit Carson and Beaubien and Governor Bent 
and Manuel Lisa, the fur trader, and a host of other 
knights of modern adventure. 

I suppose a proper picture of the Bridge, or 
Arroyo Hondo, cannot be taken; for a good one 
never has been taken, though travelers and artists 
have been coming this way for a hundred years. 
The two canons are so close together and so walled 
that it is impossible to get both in one picture ex- 
cept from an airship. It is as if the earth were 
suddenly rent, and you looked down on that under- 
world of which Indian legend tells so many wonder 
yarns. Don't mind wondering how you will go 
down! The bronchos will manage that, where an 



TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 191 

Eastern horse would break his neck and yours, too. 
The driver jams on brakes; and you drop down a 
terribly steep grade in a series of switchbacks, or 
zigzags, to the Bridge. It is the most spectacularly 
steep road I know in America. It could not be any 
steeper and not drop straight; and there isn't any- 
thing between you and the drop but your horses' 
good sense. It is one of the places where you don't 
want to hit your horse; for if he jumps, the wagon 
will not keep to the trail. It will go over taking 
you and the horse, too. 

But, before you know it, you have switched round 
the last turn and are rattling across the Bridge. 
Some Mexican teamsters are in camp below the rock 
wall of the river. The reflection of the figures and 
firelight and precipices in the deep waters calls up 
all sorts of tales of Arabian Nights and road rob- 
bers and old lawless days. Then, you pull up sharp 
at the toll house for supper, as quaint an inn as any- 
thing in Switzerland or the Himalay^is. The back 
of the house is the rock wall of the caiion. The 
front is adobe. The halls are long and low and 
narrow, with low-roofed rooms off the front side 
only. From the Bridge you can go on to Taos by 
motor in moonlight; but the whole way by stage 
and motor in one day makes a hard trip, and there 
is as much of interest at the Bridge as at Taos. 
You don't expect to find settlers in this dim silver 
underworld, do you? Well, drive a few miles up 
the Arroyo Hondo, where the stream widens out 
into garden patch farms, and you will find as odd 



192 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

specimens of Isolated humans as exist anywhere in 
the world — ' relics of the religious fanaticism of 
the secret lodges, of the Middle Ages — Penitentes, 
or Flagellantes, or Crucifixion people, who yearly 
at Lent re-enact all the sorrows of the Procession 
to the Cross, and until very recent years even re- 
enacted the Crucifixion. 

After supper we strolled out down the carion. 
It is impossible to exaggerate its beauty. Each gash 
is only the width of the river with sides straight 
as walls. The walls are yellow and black basalt, 
all spotted with red where the burning bush has 
been touched by the frosts. The rivers are clear, 
cold blue, because they are but a little way from 
the springs in the snows. Snows and clear water 
and frost in the Desert? Yes: that is as the Desert 
is in reality, not in geography books. Below the 
Bridge, you can follow the Rio Grande down to 
some famous hot springs; and in this section, the 
air is literally spicy with the oil of sagebrush. At 
daybreak, you see the water ousels singing above 
the rapids, and you may catch the lilt of a mocking- 
bird, or see a bluebird examining some frost-touched 
berries. It is October; but the goldfinches, which 
have long since left us in the North, are in myriads 
here. 

The second day at the Bridge, we drove up the 
Arroyo Hondo to see the Penitentes. It is the only 
way I know that you can personally visit a people 
who in every characteristic belong to the Twelfth 
Century. The houses of the Arroyo Hondo are 



TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 193 

very small and very poor; for the Penitente is think- 
ing not of this world but of the world to come. 
The orchards are amazingly old. These people 
and their ancestors must have been here for centuries 
and as isolated from the rest of the world as if 
living back five centuries. The Penitente is not an 
Indian; he is a peon. Pueblo Indians repudiate 
Penitente practices. Neither is the Penitente a 
Catholic. He is really a relic of the secret lodge 
orders that overran Europe with religious disorders 
and fanatic practices in the Twelfth Century. Ex- 
cept for the Lenten processions, rites are practiced 
at night. There are the Brothers of the Light — 
La Luz — and the Brothers of the Darkness — Las 
Tinieblas. The meeting halls are known as Mora- 
dos; and those seen by us were without windows 
and with only one narrow door. Women meet in 
one lodge, men in another. The sign manual of 
membership is a cross tattooed on forehead, chin or 
back. When a death occurs, the body is taken to 
the Morado, and a wake held. After Penitente 
rites have been performed, a priest is called in for 
final services; and up to the present, the priests have 
been unable to break the strength of these secret 
lodges. Members are bound by secret oath to help 
each other and stand by each other; and it is com- 
monly charged that politicians join the Penitentes 
to get votes and doctors to get patients. Easter 
and Lent mark the grand rally of the year. On one 
hill above the Arroyo Hondo, you can see a suc- 
cession of crosses where Penitentes have whipped 



194 TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 

themselves senseless with cactus belts, or dropped 
from exhaustion carrying a cross; and only last 
spring — 19 1 2 — a woman marched carrying a 
great cross to which the naked body of her baby 
was bound. We passed one cross erected to com- 
memorate a woman who died from self-inflicted in- 
juries suffered during the procession of 1907. 

The procession emerges from the Morado chanting 
in low, doleful tune the Miserere. First come the 
Flagellantes, or marchers, scourging their naked 
backs with cactus belts and whips. Next march the 
cross carriers with a rattling of iron chains fastened 
to the feet; then, the general congregation. The 
march terminates at a great cross erected on a hilltop 
to simulate Golgotha. Why do the people do it? 
"To appease divine wrath," they say; but they 
might ask us — why have we dipsomaniacs and 
kleptomaniacs and monstrosities in our civilized life? 
Because " Julia O'Grady and the Captain's lady 
are the same as two pins under their skins." Be- 
cause human nature dammed up from wholesome 
outlet of emotions, will find unwholesome vent; and 
these dolorous processions are only a reflex of the 
dark emotions hidden in a narrow canon shut off 
from the rest of the world. 

They were not dolorous emotions that found vent 
as we drove back down Arroyo Hondo to the Bridge. 
Our driver got out a mouth organ. Then he played 
and sang snatches of dance tunes of the old, old days 
in the True West. 



TAOS, THE PROMISED LAND 195 

" Allamahoo, right hand to your partner 
And grand hodoo." 



" Watch your partner and watch her close ; 
And when you catch her, a double doze." 

" The cock flies out and the hen flies in — 
All hands round and go it agen." 

In fact, if you want to find the old True West, 
you'll find it undiluted and pristine on the trip to 
Taos. 



CHAPTER XII 

TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY IN AMERICA 

TAOS, Santa Fe and El Paso — these were to 
the Southwest what Port Royal, Quebec and 
Montreal were to French Canada, or Bos- 
ton, Salem and Jamestown to the colonists of the 
pre-Revolutionary days on the Atlantic. El Paso 
was the gateway city from the old Spanish Domin- 
ions of the South. Santa Fe was the central mili- 
tary post, and Taos was the watch tower on the 
very outskirts of the back-of-beyond of Spanish ter- 
ritory in the wilderness land of the New World. 

Before Santa Fe became the terminus of the trail 
for American traders from Missouri and Kansas, 
Taos was the terminus of the old fur trader trail, 
in the days when Louisiana extended from New Or- 
leans to Oregon. Here, such famous frontiersmen 
as Jim Bridgar and Manuel Lisa and Jedediah Smith 
and Colonel Ashley and Kit Carson came to barter 
beads and calico and tobacco and firewater for hides 
and fur and native-woven blankets and turquoise and 
rude silver ornaments hammered out of Spanish bul- 
lion into necklace and bracelet. What Green's Hole 
and the Three Tetons were to the Middle West, 
Taos was to the Southwest. Mountains round Taos 
rise 14,000 feet from sea level. Snow glimmers 
196 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 197 

from the peaks more than half the year; and moun- 
tain torrents water the valley with a system of irriga- 
tion that never fails. Coming out of the mountains 
from the north, Taos was the natural halfway house 
on the trail south to Old Mexico. Coming out of 
the Desert from the south, Taos was the last walled 
city seen before the plunge into the wilderness of 
forests and mountains in the No-Man's-Land of the 
north. " Walled city," you say, " before the com- 
ing of white men to the West?" Yes, you can 
see those very walls to-day, walls antedating the 
coming of Coronado in 1540 by hundreds of years. 
No motor can climb up and down the steep switch- 
back to the Arroyo Hondo of the Bridge. Cars 
taken over that trail must be towed; but from the 
Bridge, you can go on to Taos by motor. As you 
ascend the mesa above the river bed, you see the 
mountains ahead rise in black basalt like castellated 
walls, with tower and battlement jagged into the 
very clouds. Patches of yellow and red splotch the 
bronzing forests, where frost has touched the foli- 
age; and you haven't gone very many miles into the 
lilac mist of the morning light — shimmering as it 
always shimmers above the sagebrush blue and sandy 
gold of the Upper Mesas — before you hear the 
laughter of living waters coming down from the 
mountain snows. One understands why the Indians 
chose the uplands; while the white man, who came 
after, had to choose the shadowy bottoms of the 
walled-in canons. Someone, back in the good old 
days when we were not afraid to be poetic, said 

\ 



198 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

something about " traveling on the wings of the 
morning." I can't put in words what he meant; 
but you do it here — going up and up so gradually 
that you don't realize that you are in the lap, not 
of mountains, but of mountain peaks; breathing, 
not air, but ozone; uplifted by a great weight being 
taken off spirit and body; looking at life through 
rose-colored tints, not metaphorically, but really; 
for there is something in this high rare air — not 
dust, not moisture — that splits white light into its 
seven prismatic hues. You look through an atmos- 
phere wonderfully rare, but it is never clear, white 
light. It is lavender, or lilac, or primrose, or gold, 
or red as blood according to the hours and the mood 
of hours; and if you want to carry the metaphor 
still farther, you may truthfully add that the hours 
on these high uplands are dancing hours. You 
never feel time to be a heavy, slow thing that op- 
presses the soul. 

As the streams laugh down from the mountains, 
ranches grow more and more frequent. It is charac- 
teristic of the West that you don't cross the acequias 
on bridges. You cross them on two planks, with risk 
to your car if the driver swerve at the steering wheel. 
All the houses are red earth adobe, thick of wall to 
shut out both heat and cold, with a smell of juniper 
wood in the fireplaces of each room. Much of this 
land — nearly all of it, in fact — is owned by the 
Taos Indians and held in common for pasturage and 
cultivation. Title was given by Spain four centu- 
ries ago, and the same title holds to-day in spite of 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 199 

white squatters' attempt to break down the law by 
cutting the wire of the pasture fences and taking the 
case to the courts. It was in this way that squatters 
broke down the title of old Spanish families to thou- 
sands and hundreds of thousands of acres granted 
before American occupation. To be sure, an Amer- 
ican land commission took evidence on these titles, 
in the quarrel between Yankee squatter and Spanish 
don; but the squatter had " friends in court." The 
old Spanish don hadn't. He saw titles that had held 
good from 1540 slipping from his neighbor's hands; 
and he either contested the case to lose out before 
he had begun, or sold and sold at a song to save the 
wreckage of his fortunes. Of all the Spanish land 
grants originally partitioning off what is now New 
Mexico, I know of only one held by the family of 
the original grantee; and It is now in process of par- 
tition. It Is an untold page of Southwestern history, 
this " stampeding " of Spanish titles. Some day, 
when we are a little farther away from it, the story 
will be told. It will not make pleasant reading, nor 
afford a bill of health to some family fortunes of the 
Southwest. Perjuries, assassinations, purchase In open 
markets of judges drawing such small pittances that 
they were In the auction mart for highest bid, forged 
documents, Incendiary fires to destroy true titles — 
these were the least and most decent of the crimes of 
this era. " Ramona " tells what happened to Indian 
titles In California. Paint Helen Hunt Jackson's 
colors red Instead of gray; multiply the crimes by 
ten instead of two; and you have a faint picture of 



200 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

the land-jockey period of New Mexican history. 
Something of this sort is going on at Taos to-day 
among the pueblos for their land, and down at Saca- 
ton a-mong the Pimas for water. Treaty guaran- 
teed the Indian his rights, but at Taos the squatter 
cut the pueblo fences and carried the case to court. 
At Sacaton, the big squatter, the irrigation company, 
took the Pimas' water; so that the Indian can no 
longer raise crops. If you want to know what the 
courts do in these cases, ask the pueblo governor at 
Taos; or the Pima chief at Sacaton. 

It is late September. A parrot calls out in Span- 
ish from the center of the patio where our rooms 
look out on an arcade running round the court in a 
perfect square. A mocking-bird trills saucily from 
his cage amid the cosmos bloom. Donkeys and bur- 
ros amble past the rear gate with loads of wood 
strapped to their backs. Your back window looks 
out on the courtyard. Your front window faces the 
street across from a plaza, or city square. Stalwart, 
thick-set, muscular figures, hair banded back by red 
and white scarfs, trousers of a loose, white pantaloon 
sort, tunic a gray or white blanket, wrapped Arab 
fashion from shoulders to waist, stalk with quick, 
nervous tread along the plaza; for it is the feast of 
Saint Geronimo presently. The whole town is in 
festal attire. There will be dancing all night and 
all day, and rude theatricals, and horse and foot 
races; and the plaza is agog with sightseers. No, 
it is not Persia; and it is not Palestine; and it is not 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 201 

Spain. It is just plain, commonplace America out 
at Taos — white man's Taos, at the old Columbia 
Hotel, which is the last of the old-time Spanish inns. 

As you motor into the town, the long rows of great 
cottonwoods and poplars attest the great age of the 
place. Through windows deep set in adobe case- 
ment and flush with the street, you catch glimpses of 
inner patios where oleanders and roses are still in 
bloom. Then you see the roof windows of artists' 
studios, and find yourself not only in an old Spanish 
town but in the midst of a modern art colony, which 
has been called into being by the unique coloring, 
form and antiquity of life in the Southwest. A few 
years ago, when Lungren and Philips and Sharpe 
and a dozen others began portraying the marvelous 
coloring of the Southwestern Desert with its almost 
Arab life, the public refused to accept such spectacu- 
lar, un-American work as true. Such pictures were 
diligently " skied " by hanging committees, and a 
few hundred dollars was deemed a good price. To- 
day, Southwestern art forms a school by itself; and 
where commissions used to go begging at hundreds 
of dollars, they to-day command prices of thousands 
and tens of thousands. When I was in Taos, one 
artist was filling commissions for an Eastern col- 
lector that would mount up to prices paid for the 
best work of Watts and Whistler. It is a brutal 
way to put art in terms of the dollar bill; but it is 
sometimes the only way to make a people realize 
there are prophets in our own country. 

Columbia Hotel is really one of the famous old 



202 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

Spanish mansions occupying almost the entire side 
of a plaza square. From its street entrance, you 
can see down the little alleyed street where dwelt 
Kit Carson in the old days. His old home is almost 
a wreck to-day, and there does not seem to be the 
slightest movement to convert it into a shrine where 
the hundreds of sightseers who come to the Indian 
dances could brush up memories of old frontier 
heroes. There are really only four streets In Taos, 
all facing the Plaza or town square. Other streets 
are alleys running off these, and when you see a no- 
tary's sign out as " alcalde," it does not seem so 
very far back to the days when Spanish dons lounged 
round the Plaza wearing silk capes and velvet trou- 
sers and buckled shoes, and Spanish conquistadores 
rode past armed cap-a-pie, and Spanish grand dames 
stole glances at the outside world through the lattices 
of the mansion houses. In some of these old Span- 
ish houses, you will find the deep casement windows 
very high in the wall. I asked a descendant of one 
of the old Spanish families why that was. " For 
protection," she said. 

"Indians?" I asked. 

" No — Spanish women were not supposed to see, 
or be seen by, the outside world." 

The pueblo proper lies about four miles out from 
the white man's town. Laguna, Acoma, Zuni, the 
Three Mesas of the Tusayan Desert — all lie on 
hillsides, or on the very crest of high acclivities. 
Taos is the exception among purely Indian pueblos. 
It lies in the lap of the valley among the mountains, 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 203 

two castellated, five story adobe structures, one on 
each side of a mountain stream. In other pueblo 
villages, while the houses may adjoin one another 
like stone fronts in our big cities, they are not like 
huge beehive apartment houses. In Taos, the houses 
are practically two great communal dwellings, with 
each apartment assigned to a special clan or family. 
In all, some 700 people dwell in these two huge 
houses. How many rooms are there? Not less 
than an average of three to each family. Remnants 
of an ancient adobe wall surround the entire pueblo. 
A new whitewashed Mission church stands in the 
center of the village, but you can still see the old 
one pitted with cannon-ball and bullet, where Gen- 
eral Price shelled it in the uprising of the pueblos 
after American occupation. Men wear store trou- 
sers and store hats. You see some modern wagons. 
Except for these, you are back in the days of Coro- 
nado. All the houses can be entered only by 
ladders that ascend to the roofs and can be drawn 
up — the pueblo way of bolting the door. The 
houses run up three, four and five stories. They 
are adobe color outside, that is to say, a pinkish 
gray; and whitewashed spotlessly inside. Watch a 
woman draped in white linen blanket ascending 
these ladders, and you have to convince yourself that 
you are not in the Orient. Down by the stream, 
women with red and blue and white shawls over 
their heads, and feet encased in white puttees, are 
washing blankets by beating them in the flowing 
water. Go up the succession of ladders to the very 



204 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

top of a five stoned house, and look out. You can 
see the pasture fields, where the herds graze in com- 
mon. On the outskirts of the village, men and boys 
are threshing, that is- — they are chasing ponies 
round and round inside a kraal, with a flag stuck 
up to show which way the wind blows, one man fork- 
ing chaff with the wind, another scraping the grain 
outside the circle. 

Glance inside the houses. The upstairs is evi- 
dently the living-room; for the fireplace is here, 
and the pot is on. Off the living-room are corn and 
meal bins, and you can see the metate or stone on 
which the corn is ground by the women as in the days 
of Old Testament record. Though there is a new 
Mission church dating from the uprising in the 
forties, and an old Mission church dating almost 
from 1540, you can see from the roof dozens of 
estufas, where the men are practicing for their 
dances and masked theatricals. Tony, the assistant 
governor, an educated man of about forty who has 
traveled with Wild West shows, acts as our guide, 
and tells us about the squatters trying to get the 
Indian land. How would you like an intruder to 
sit down in the maddle of your farm and fence off 
160 acres? The Indians didn't like it, and cut the 
fences. Then the troops were sent out. That was 
in 1910 — a typical "uprising," when the white 
man has both troops and courts on his side. The 
case has gone to the courts, and Tony doesn't expect 
it to be settled very soon. In fact, Tony likes their 
own form of government better than the white man's. 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 205 

All this he tells you In the softest, coolest voice, for 
Tony Is not only assistant governor: he Is constable 
to keep white men from bringing In liquor during 
the festal week. They yearly elect their own gov- 
ernor. That governor's word is absolutely supreme 
for his tenure of office. Is there a dispute over 
crops, or cattle? The governor's word settles it 
without any rigmarole of talk by lawyers. 

" Supposing the guilty man doesn't obey the gov- 
ernor? " we ask. 

" Then we send our own police, and take him, and 
put him in the stocks in the lock-up," and he takes 
us around and shows us both the stocks and the 
lock-up. These stocks clamp down a man's head as 
well as his hands and feet. A man with his neck 
and hands anchored down between his feet In a black 
room naturally wouldn't remain disobedient long. 

The method of voting Is older than the white 
man's ballot. The Indians enter the estiifa. A 
mark Is drawn across the sand. Two men are nomi- 
nated. (No — women do not vote ; the women rule 
the house absolutely. The men rule fields and crops 
and village courtyard.) The voters then signify 
their choice by marks on the sand. 

Houses are built and occupied communally, and 
ground Is held In common; but the product of each 
man's and each woman's labor is his or her own 
and not In common — the nearest approach to so- 
cialistic life that America has yet known. The peo- 
ple here speak a language different from the other 
pueblos, and this places their origin almost as far 



2o6 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

back as the origin of Anglo-Saxon races. Another 
feature sets pueblo races apart from all other native 
races of America. Though these people have been 
in contact with whites nearly 400 years, Intermarriage 
with whites is almost unknown. Purity of blood is 
almost as sacredly guarded among Pueblos as among 
the ancient Jews. The population remains almost 
stationary; but the bad admixtures of a mongrel race 
are unknown. 

We call the head man of the pueblo the governor, 
but the Spanish know him as a cacique. Associated 
with him are the old men — may ores, or council ; 
and this council of wise old men enters so intimately 
Into the lives of the people that it advises the young 
men as to marriage. We have preachers in our 
religious ranks. The Pueblos have proclaimers 
who harangue from the housetops, or estufas. As 
women stoop over the metates grinding the meal, 
men sing good cheer from the door. The chile, 
or red pepper, Is pulverized between stones the same 
as the grain. Though openly Catholic and In at- 
tendance on the Mission church, the pueblo people 
still practice all the secret rites of Montezuma; and 
In all the course of four centuries of contact, white 
men have never been able to learn the ceremonies 
of the estufas. 

Women never enter the estufas. 

Who were the first white men to see Taos? It is 
not certainly known, but It Is vaguely supposed they 
were Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, 
shipwrecked on the coast of Florida In the Narvaez 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 207 

expedition, who wandered westward across the con- 
tinent from Taos to Laguna and Acoma. As the 
legend runs, they were made slaves by the Indians 
and traded from tribe to tribe from 1528 to 1536, 
when they reached Old Mexico. Anyway, their re- 
port of golden cities and vast, undiscovered land 
pricked New Spain into launching Coronado's expe- 
dition of 1540. Preceding the formal military ad- 
vance of Coronado, the Franciscan Fray Marcos de 
Niza and two lay brothers guided by Cabeza de 
Vaca's negro Estevan, set out with the cross in their 
hands to prepare the way. Fray Marcos advanced 
from the Gulf of California eastward. One can 
guess the weary hardship of that footsore journey- 
ing. It was made between March and September 
of 1539. Go into the Yuma Valley in September! 
The heat Is of a denseness you can cut with a knife. 
Imagine the heat of that tramp over desert sands 
In June, July and August! When Fray Marcos 
sent his Indian guides forward to Zuni, near the 
modern Gallup, he was met with the warning " Go 
back; or you will be put to death." His messengers 
refusing to be daunted, the Zuiil people promptly 
killed them and threw them over the rocks. Fray 
Marcos went on with the lay brothers. Zuni was 
called " cibola '* owing to the great number of buf- 
falo skins {ciholas) in camp. 

Fray Marcos' report encouraged the Emperor of 
Spain to go on with Coronado's expedition. That 
trip need not be told here. It has been told and re- 
told in half the languages of the world. The Span- 



208 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

iards set out from Old Mexico 300 strong, with 800 
Indian escorts and four priests including Marcos 
and a lay brother. What did they expect? Prob- 
ably a second Peru, temples with walls of gold and 
images draped in jewels of priceless worth. What 
did they find? In Zuiii and the Three Mesas and 
Taos, small, sun-baked clay houses built tier on tier 
on top of each other like a child's block house, with 
neither precious stones, nor metals of any sort, but 
only an abundance of hides and woven cloth. When 
the soldiers saw Zuni, they broke out in jeers and 
curses at the priest. Poor Fray Marcos was think- 
ing more of souls saved from perdition than of loot, 
and returned in shamed embarrassment to New 
Spain. 

Across the Desert to the Three Mesas and the 
Caiion of the Colorado, east again to Acoma and the 
Enchanted Mesa, up to the pueblo town now known 
as the city of Santa Fe, into the Pecos, and north, 
yet north of Taos, Coronado's expedition practically 
made a circuit of all the Southwest from the Colo- 
rado River to East Kansas. The knightly adven- 
turers did not find gold, and we may guess, as winter 
came on with heavy snows in the Upper Desert, 
they were in no very good mood; for now began 
that contest between white adventurers and Pueb- 
los which lasted down to the middle of the Nine- 
teenth Century. At the pueblo now known as 
Bernalillo, the soldiers demanded blankets to protect 
them from the cold. The Indians stripped their 
houses to help their visitors, but in the melee and no 




A fashionable metal-worker of Taos, New Mexico, who 
has not adhered to the native costume 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 209 

doubt in the 111 humor of both sides there were at- 
tacks and insults by the white aggressors, and a state 
of siege lasted for two months. Practically from 
that date to 1840, the pueblo towns were a unit 
against the white man. 

The last great uprising was just after the Ameri- 
can Occupation. Bent, the great trader of Bent's 
Fort on the Arkansas, was governor. Kit Carson, 
who had run away from the saddler's trade at six- 
teen and for whom a reward of one cent was offered, 
had joined the Santa Fe caravans and was now living 
at Taos, an influential man among the Indians. Ac- 
cording to Col. Twitchell, whose work is the most 
complete on New Mexico and who received the ac- 
count direct from the governor's daughter, Governor 
Bent knew that danger was brewing. The Pueblos 
had witnessed Spanish power overthrown; then, the 
expulsion of Mexican rule. Why should they, 
themselves, not expel American domination? 

It was January 18, 1847. Governor Bent had 
come up from Santa Fe to visit Taos. He was 
warned to go back, or to get a military escort; but 
a trader all his life among the Indians, be flouted 
danger. Traders' rum had inflamed the Indians. 
They had crowded in from their pueblo town to the 
plaza of Taos. Insurrectionary Mexicans, who had 
cause enough to complain of the American policy 
regarding Spanish land titles, had harangued the 
Indians into a flare of resentful passion. Governor 
Bent and his family were in bed in the house you 
can see over to the left of the Plaza. In the kraal 



2IO TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

were plenty of horses for escape, but the family were 
awakened at daybreak by a rabble crowding into 
the central courtyard. Kit Carson's wife, Mrs. 
Bent, Mrs. Boggs and her children hurried into the 
shelter of an inner room. Young Alfredo Bent, 
only ten years old, pulled his gun from the rack 
with the words — "Papa, let us fight;" but Bent 
had gone to the door to parley with the leaders. 

Taking advantage of the check, the women and an 
Indian slave dug a hole with a poker and spoon un- 
der the adobe wall of the room into the next house. 
Through this the family crawled away from the be- 
sieged room to the next house, Mrs. Bent last, call- 
ing for her husband to come; but it was too late. 
Governor Bent was shot in the face as he expostu- 
lated; clubbed down and literally scalped alive. He 
dragged himself across the floor, to follow his wife; 
but Indians came up through the hole and down over 
the roof and in through the windows; and Bent fell 
dead at the feet of his family. 

The family were left prisoners In the room with- 
out food, or clothing except night dresses, all that 
day and the next night. At daybreak friendly Mexi- 
cans brought food, and the women were taken away 
disguised as squaws. Once, when searching Indiana 
came to the house of the old Mexican who had shel- 
tered the family, the rescuer threw the searchers 
off by setting his " squaws " to grinding meal on 
the kitchen floor. Kit Carson, at this time, un- 
fortunately happened to be in California. He was 
the one man who could have restrained the Indians. 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 211 

The Indians then proceeded down to the Arroyo 
Hondo to catch some mule loads of whiskey and pro- 
visions, which were expected through the narrow 
cafion. The mill where the mules had been unhar- 
nessed was surrounded that night. The teamsters 
plugged up windows and loaded for the fray that 
must come with daylight. Seven times the Indians 
attempted to rush an assault. Each time, a rifle 
shot puffed from the mill and an Indian leaped into 
the air to fall back dead. Then the whole body of 
500 Indians poured a simultaneous volley into the 
mill. Two of the Americans inside fell dead. A 
third was severely wounded. By the afternoon of 
the second day, the Americans were without balls or 
powder. The Indians then crept up and set fire to 
the mill. The Americans hid themselves among the 
stampeding stock of the kraal. Night was coming 
on. The Pueblos were crowding round In a circle. 
The surviving Americans opened the gates and made 
a dash in the dark for the mountains. Two only es- 
caped. The rest were lanced and scalped as they 
ran; and in the loot of the teams, the Indians are 
supposed to have secured some well-filled chests of 
gold specie. 

By January 23 rd, General Price had marched out 
at the head of five companies, from old Fort Marcy 
at Santa Fe for Taos. He had 353 men and four 
cannon. You can see the marks yet on the old Mis- 
sion at Taos, where the cannon-balls battered down 
the adobe walls. The Indians did not wait his com- 
ing. They met him 1,500 strong on the heights of a 



212 TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 

mesa at Santa Cruz. The Indians made wild efforts 
to capture the wagons to the rear of the artillery; 
but when an Indian rabble meets artillery, there is 
only one possible issue. The Indians fled, leaving 
thirty-six killed and forty-five wounded. No rail- 
way led up the Rio Grande at that early date; and 
It was a more notable feat for the troops to advance 
up the narrowing cafions than to defeat the foe. At 
Embudo, six or seven hundred Pueblos lined the rock 
walls under hiding of cedar and piiion. The soldiers 
had to climb to shoot; and again the Indians could 
not withstand trained fire. They left twenty killed 
and sixty wounded here. Two feet of snow lay on 
the trail as the troops ascended the uplands; and it 
was February 3rd before they reached Taos. Every 
ladder had been drawn up, every window barricaded, 
and the high walls of the tiered great houses were 
bristling with rifle barrels; but rifle defense could not 
withstand the big shells of the assailants. The two 
pueblos were completely surrounded. A six pounder 
was brought within ten yards of the walls. A shell 
was fired — the church wall battered down, and the 
dragoons rushed through the breach. By the night 
of Feb. 4th, old men, women and children bearing 
the cross came suing for peace. The ringleader, 
Tomas, was delivered to General Price; and the 
troops drew off with a loss of seven killed and forty- 
five wounded. The Pueblos loss was not less than 
200. Thus ended the last attempt of the Pueblos 
to overthrow alien domination; and this attempt 
would not have been made if the Indians had not 



TAOS, THE MOST ANCIENT CITY 213 

been spurred on by Mexican revolutionaries, with 
counter plots of their own. 

We motored away from Taos by sunset. An old 
Indian woman swathed all In white came creeping 
down one of the upper ladders. They could not 
throw off white rule — these Pueblos — but for four 
centuries they have withstood white influences as 
completely as in the days when they sent the couriers 
spurring with the knotted cord to rally the tribes to 
open revolt. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SAN ANTONIO, THE CAIRO OF AMERICA 

IF you want to plunge into America's Egypt, there 
are as many ways to go as you have moods. 
You explain that the ocean voyage is half the 
attraction to European travel. There may be a 
difference of opinion on that, as I know people who 
would like to believe that the Atlantic could be 
bridged; but if you are keen on an ocean voyage, you 
can reach the Egypt of America by boat to Florida, 
then west by rail; or by boat straight to any of the 
Texas harbors. By way of Florida, you can take 
your fill of the historic and antique and the pictur- 
esque in St. Augustine and Pensacola and New Or- 
leans; and if there are any yarns of rarer flavor in 
all the resorts of Europe than in the old quarters of 
these three places, I have never heard of them. 
You can drink of the spring of the elixir of life in 
St. Augustine, and lose yourself in the trenches of 
old Fort Barrancas at Pensacola, and wander at will 
in the old French town of New Orleans. Each 
place was once a pawn in the gambles of European 
statesmen. Each has heard the clang of armed 
knights, the sword in one hand, the cross in the 
other. Each has seen the pirate fleet with death's 
head on the flag at the masthead come tacking up 

314 



SAN ANTONIO 215 

the bays, sometimes to be shattered and sunk by 
cannon shot from the fort bastions. Sometimes the 
fort Itself was scuttled by the buccaneers; once, at 
least, at Fort Barrancas, it suffered loot at terrible, 
riotous, drunken hands, when a Spanish officer's 
daughter who was captured for ransom succeeded In 
plunging into the sea within sight of her watching 
father. 

But whether you enter the Egypt of America by 
rail overland, or by sea, San Antonio is the gate- 
way city from the south to the land of play and 
mystery. It Is to the Middle West what Quebec is 
to Canada, what Cairo is to Egypt — the gateway, 
the meeting place of old and new, of Latin and 
Saxon, of East and West, of North and South. At- 
mosphere? Physically, the atmosphere Is cham- 
pagne : spiritually, you have not gone ten paces from 
the station before you feel a flavor as of old Avine. 
There are the open Spanish plazas riotous with 
bloom flanked by Spanish-Moorish ruins flush on the 
pavement, with skyscraper hotels that are the last 
word in modernity. Live oaks heavy with Spanish 
moss hang over sleepy streams that come from every- 
where and meander nowhere. You see a squad of 
soldiers from Fort Sam Houston wheeling in meas- 
ured tread around a square (only there isn't any- 
thing absolutely square in all San Antonio) and they 
have hardly gone striding out of sight before you see 
a Mexican burro trotting to market with a load of 
hay tied on its back. A motor comes bumping over 
the roads — such roads as only the antique can boast 



2i6 SAN ANTONIO 

— and if it is fiesta time, or cowboy celebration, you 
are apt to see cowboys cutting such figure eights in 
the air as a motor cannot execute on antique pave- 
ment. 

You enter a hotel and imagine you are in the 
Plaza, New York, or the Ritz, London; but stay! 
The frieze above the marble walls isn't gilt; and it 
isn't tapestry. The frieze is a long panel in bronze 
alto-relievo. I think it is a testimonial to San An- 
tonio's sense of the fitness of things that that frieze 
is not of Roman gladiators, or French gardens with 
beringed ladies and tame fawns. It is a frieze of 
the cowboys taking a stampeding herd up the long 
trail — drifting and driving but held together by a 
rough fellow in top boots and sombrero; and the 
rotunda has a frieze of cowboys because that three- 
million-dollar hotel was built out of " cow " money. 
Old and new, past and present, Saxon and Latin, 
North and South, East and West — that is San An- 
tonio. You can never forget it for a minute. It 
is such a shifting panorama as you could only get 
from traveling thousands of miles elsewhere, or com- 
paring a hundred Remington drawings. San An- 
tonio is a curious combination of Remington and 
Alma Tadema in real life; and I don't know any- 
where else in the world you can get it. There are 
three such huge hotels in San Antonio besides a score 
of lesser ones, to take care of the 30,000 tourists 
who come from the Middle West to winter in San 
Antonio; but remember that while 30,000 seems a 
large number of tourists for one place, that Is only 



SAN ANTONIO 217 

one-tenth the number of Americans who yearly see 
Europe. 

And never for a moment can you forget that as 
Cairo is the gateway to Eastern travel, so San An- 
tonio is on the road to Old Mexico and all the for- 
mer Spanish possessions of the South. It was here 
that Madero's band of revolutionists lived and laid 
the plans that overthrew Diaz. Long ago, before 
the days of railway, it was here that the long cara- 
vans of mule trains used to come with, silver and 
gold from the mines of Old Mexico. It was here 
the highwaymen and roughs and toughs and scum of 
the earth used to lie in wait for the passing bullion; 
and it was here the Texas Rangers came with short, 
quick, sharp shrift for rustlers and robbers. There 
is one corner in San Antonio where you can see a 
Mission dating back to the early seventeen hundreds, 
and not a stone's throw away, one of the most fa- 
mous gambling joints of the wildest days of the wild 
Southwest — the site of the old Silver King, where 
cowboys and miners from the South used to come in 
" to clean out " their earnings of a year, sometimes 
to ride horses over faro tables, or pot-shot rows of 
champagne. A man had " to smile " when he called 
his " pardner " pet names in the Silver King; or 
there would be crackle of more than champagne 
corks. Men would duck for hiding. A body 
would be dragged out, sand spread on the floor, and 
the games went on morning, noon and night. The 
Missions are crumbling ruins. So is the Silver King. 
Frontiersmen will tell you regretfully of the good 



2i8 SAN ANTONIO 

old days forever gone, when the night passed but 
dully if the cowboys did not shoot up all the saloons 
and " hurdle " the gaming tables. 

Yesterday, it was cowboy and mines in San An- 
tonio. To-day, it is polo and tourist; and the transi- 
tion is a natural growth. One would hate to think 
of the risks of the Long Trail, for miners from Old 
Mexico to Fort Leavenworth, for cowboys from 
Fort Worth to Wyoming and St. Louis, and not see 
the risks rewarded in fortunes to these trail makers. 
The cowboy and miner of the olden days — the 
cowboy and miner who survived, that is — are the 
capitalists taking their pleasure in San Antonio to- 
day. It was natural that the cow pony bred to keep- 
ing its feet in mid-air, or on earth, should develop 
into the finest type of polo pony ever known. For 
years, the polo clubs of the North, Lenox, Long 
Island, Milbrook, have made a regular business of 
scouring Texas for polo ponies. Horses giving 
promise of good points would be picked up at $80, 
$100, $150. They would then be rounded on a 
ranch and trained. San Antonio is situated almost 
700 feet up on a high, clear plateau rimmed by blue 
ridges in the distance. Recently, a polo ground of 
3,200 acres has been laid out; and the polo clubs 
of the North are to be invited to San Antonio for 
the winter fiestas. As Fort Sam Houston boasts 
one of the best polo clubs of the South, competition 
is likely to attract the sportsmen from far and 
near. 



SAN ANTONIO 219 

You know how it is in all these new Western cities. 
They are feverish with a mania of progress. They 
have grown so fast they cannot keep track of their 
own hobble-de-hoy, sprawling limbs. They are 
drunk with prosperity. In real estate alone, for- 
tunes have come, as it were, overnight. All this 
San Antonio has not escaped. They will tell you 
with pardonable pride how this little cow town, 
where land wasn't worth two cents an acre out- 
side the Mission walls, has jumped to be a metropoli- 
tan city of over 100,000; how it is the center of the 
great truck and irrigation farm district. Fort Sam 
Houston always has 700 or 800 soldiers in garrison, 
and sometimes has as many as 4,000; and when army 
maneuvers take place, there is an immense reserva- 
tion outside the city where as many as 20,000 men 
can practice mimic war. The day of two cents or 
even $20 an acre land round San Antonio is forever 
past. Land under the ditch is too valuable for the 
rating of twenty acres to one steer. 

All this and more you will see of modern San 
Antonio; but still if at sundown you set out on a 
vagrant and solitary tour of the old Missions, I 
think you will feel as I felt that it was the dauntless 
spirit of the old regime that fired the blood of the 
moderns for the new day that is dawning. I don't 
know why it is, but anything in life that is worth hav- 
ing seems to demand service and sacrifice and, oftener 
than not, the martyrdom of heroic and terrible de- 
feat. Then, when you think that the flag of the 
cause is trampled in a mire of bloodshed, phoenix- 



220 SAN ANTONIO 

like the cause rises on eagles' wings to new height, 
new daring, new victory. It was so in Texas. 

When you visit the Missions of San Antonio, go 
alone; or go with a kindred spirit. Don't talk! 
Let the mysticism and wonder of it sink in your soul! 
Soak yourself in the traditions of the Past. Let the 
dead hand of the Past reach out and touch you. 
You will live over again the heroism of the Alamo, 
the heroism that preceded the Alamo — that of the 
Franciscans who tramped 300 leagues across the des- 
ert of Old Mexico to establish these Missions; the 
heroism that preceded the Franciscans — that of La 
Salle traveling thrice 300 leagues to establish the 
cross on the Gulf of Mexico, and perishing by as- 
sassin's hand as he turned on the backward march. 
You will see the iron cross to his memory at Levaca. 
It was because La Salle, the Frenchman, found his 
way to the Gulf, that Spain stirred up the viceroys 
of New Mexico to send sword and cross over the 
desert to establish forts in the country of the Tejas 
(Texans). 

Do you realize what that means? When I cross 
the arid hills of the Rio Grande, I travel in a car 
cooled by electric fans, with two or three iced drinks 
between meals. These men marched — most of 
them on foot, the cowled priests in sandals, the 
knights in armor plate from head to heel — over 
cactus sands. Do you wonder that they died on the 
way? Do you wonder that the marchers coming 
into the well-watered plains of the San Antonio with 
festooned live oaks overhanging the green waters. 



SAN ANTONIO 221 

paused here and built their string of Missions of 
which the chief was the one now known as " The 
Alamo" — the Mission of the cottonwood trees? 

Six different flags have flown over the land of 
the Tejas: the French, the Spanish, the Mexican, 
the Republic of Texas, the Confederate, the Union. 
In such a struggle for ascendancy, needless to tell, 
much blood was shed righteously and unrighteously; 
but of the battle fought at the Alamo, no justifica- 
tion need be given. It Is part of American history, 
but it is the kind of history that In other nations 
goes to make battle hymns. Details are in every 
school book. Santa Ana, the newly risen Mexican 
dictator, had ordered the 30,000 Americans who 
lived in Texas, to disarm. Sam Houston, Crockett, 
Bowie, Travis, had sprung to arms with a call that 
rings down to history yet: 

" Fellow citizens and compatriots," wrote Travis 
from the doomed Alamo Mission, to Houston and 
the other leaders outside, " I am besieged by a thou- 
sand or more Mexicans under Santa Ana. I have 
sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four 
hours and have not lost a man. . . . The garrison 
is to be put to the sword If the place is taken. I 
have answered the summons with a cannon shot and 
our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall 
never surrender, nor retreat. I call on you In the 
name of liberty, and of everything dear to the Ameri- 
can character, to come to our aid with all despatch. 
The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily, and 



222 SAN ANTONIO 

will no doubt Increase to 3,000 or 4,000 in four or 
five days. Though this call may be neglected, I am 
determined to sustain myself as long as possible and 
die like a soldier who forgets not what is due to his 
own honor and that of his country — Victory or 
Death I 

W. Barrett Travis 

Lieut.-Col. Commanding." 

In the fort with Travis were 180 men under Bowie 
and Crockett. The siege began on Feb. 23, 1836, 
and ended on March 6th. Besides the frontiersmen 
in the fort were two women, two children and 
two slaves. The Mission was arranged in a great 
quadrangle fifty-four by 154 yards with acequias or 
irrigation ditches both to front and rear. The gar- 
rison had succeeded In getting inside the walls about 
thirty bushels of corn and eighty beef cattle; so there 
was no danger of famine. The big courtyard was 
in the rear. The convent projected out in front of 
the courtyard. To the left angle of the convent was 
the chapel or Mission of the Alamo. Santa Ana 
had come across the desert with 5,000 men. To the 
demand for surrender, Travis answered with a can- 
non shot. The Mexican leader then hung the re'd 
flag above his camp and ordered the band to play 
" no quarter." For eight days, shells came hurtling 
inside the walls incessantly, dawn to dark, dark to 
dawn. Just at sunset on March 3rd, there was a 
bell. Travis collected his men and gave them their 
choice of surrendering and being shot, or cutting 



SAN ANTONIO 223 

their way out through the besieging line. The be- 
siegers at this time consisted of 2,500 infantrymen 
bunched close to the walls of the Alamo — too close 
to be shot from above, and 2,500 cavalry and in- 
fantry back on the Plaza and encircling the Mission 
to cut off all avenue of escape. 

Travis drew a line on the ground with his sword. 

" Every man who will die with me, come across 
that line I Who will be first? March I" 

Every man leaped over the line but Bowie, who 
was ill on a cot bed. 

" Boys, move my cot over the line," he said. 

At four o'clock next morning, the siege was re- 
sumed. The bugle blew a single blast. With picks, 
crowbars and ladders, the Mexicans closed in. The 
besieged waited breathlessly. The Mexicans placed 
the ladders and began scaling. The sharpshooters 
inside the walls waited till the heads appeared above 
the walls — then fired. As the top man fell back, 
the one beneath on the ladder stepped In the dead 
man's place. Then the Americans clubbed their 
guns and fought hand to hand. By that, the Mexi- 
cans knew that ammunition was exhausted and the 
defenders few. The walls were scaled and battered 
down first In a far corner of the convent yard. Be- 
hind the chapel door, piles of sand had been stacked. 
From the yard, the Texans were driven to the con- 
vent, from the convent to the chapel. Travis fell 
shot at the breach in the yard wall. Bowie was 
bayoneted on the cot where he lay, Crockett was 
clubbed to death just outside the chapel door to the 



2 24 SAN ANTONIO 

left. By nine o'clock, no answering shot came from 
the Alamo. The doors were rammed and rushed. 
Not a Texan survived. Two women, two children 
and a couple of slaves were pulled out of hiding 
from chancel and stalls. These were sent across to 
the main camp. The bodies of the 182 heroes were 
piled in a pyramid with fagots; and fired. So 
ended the Battle of the Alamo, one of the most 
terrible defeats and heroic defenses in American his- 
tory. It is unnecessary to relate that Sam Houston 
exacted from the Mexicans on the battlefield of San 
Jacinto a terrible punishment for this defeat. Cap- 
tured and killed, his toll of defeated Mexicans down 
at Houston came to almost 1,700. 

Such is the story of one of San Antonio's Mis- 
sions. One other has a tale equally tragic; but all 
but two are falling to utter ruin. I don't know 
whether it would be greater desecration to lay hand 
on them and save them, or let them fall to dust. It 
was nightfall when I went to the three on the out- 
skirts of the city. Two have little left but the walls 
and the towers. A third is still used as place of 
worship by a little settlement of Mexicans. The 
slant light of sunset came through the darkened, 
vacant windows, the tiers of weathered stalls, the 
empty, twin-towered belfries. You could see where 
the well stood, the bake house, the school. Shrub- 
bery planted by the monks has grown wild in the 
courtyards; but you can still call up the picture of 
the cowled priests chanting prayers. The Missions 



SAN ANTONIO 225 

are ruins; but the hope that animated them, the fire, 
the heroism, the dauntless faith, still burn in Texas 
blood as the sunset flame shines through the dis- 
mantled windows. 



CHAPTER XIV 

CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

IF someone should tell you of a second Grand 
Caiion gashed through wine-colored rocks in the 
purple light peculiar to the uplands of very 
high mountains — a second Grand Caiion, where 
lived a race of little men not three feet tall, where 
wild turkeys were domesticated as household birds 
and every man's door was in the roof and his door- 
step a ladder that he carried up after him — you 
would think it pure imagination, wouldn't you? 
The Lilliputians away out in " Gulliver's Travels," 
or something like that? And if your narrator went 
on about magicians who danced with live rattlesnakes 
hanging from their teeth and belted about their 
waists, and played with live fire without being 
burned, and walked up the faces of precipices as a 
fly walks up a wall — you would think him rehears- 
ing some Robinson Crusoe tale about two genera- 
tions too late to be believed. 

Yet there is a second Grand Caiion not a stone's 
throw from everyday tourist travel, wilder in game 
life and rock formation if not so large, with prehis- 
toric caves on its precipice walls where sleeps a race 
of little mummied men behind doors and windows 
barely large enough to admit a half-grown white 

a26 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 227 

child. Who were they? No one knows. When 
did they live? So long ago that they were cave 
men, stone age men; so long ago that neither his- 
tory nor tradition has the faintest echo of their 
existence. Where did they live? No, it was not 
Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia. If it were, we 
would know about them. As it happens, this second 
Grand Caiion is only in plain, nearby, home-staying 
America; so when boys of the Forest Service pulled 
Little Zeke out of his gypsum and pumice stone dust 
and measured him up and found him only twenty- 
three inches long, though the hair sticking to the 
skull was gray and the teeth were those of an adult 
— as it happened in only matter-of-fact, common- 
place America, poor Little Zeke couldn't get shelter. 
They trounced his little dry bones round Silver City, 
New Mexico, for a few months. Then they boxed 
him up and shipped him away to be stored out of 
sight in the cellars of the Smithsonian, at Washing- 
ton. As Zeke has been asleep since the Ice Age, 
or about ten to eight thousand years B. C, it doesn't 
make very much difference to him; but one wonders 
what in the world New Mexico was doing allowing 
one of the most wonderful specimens of a prehistoric 
dwarf race ever found to be shipped out of the 
country. 

It was in the Gila Canon that the Forestry Serv- 
ice boys found him. By some chance, they at once 
dubbed the little mummy " Zeke." The Gila is a 
typical box-caiion, walled as a tunnel, colored in 
fire tints like the Grand Caiion, literally terraced 



228 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

and honeycombed with the cave dwellings of a pre- 
historic race. It lies some fifty miles as the crow 
flies from Silver City; but the way the crow flies and 
the way man travels are an altogether diflierent story 
in the wild lands of the Gila Mountains. You'll 
have to make the most of the way on horseback with 
tents for hotels, or better still the stars for a roof. 
Besides, what does it matter when or how the little 
scrub of a twenty-three-inch man lived anyway? 
We moderns of evolutionary smattering have our 
own ideas of how cave men dwelt; and we don't 
want those ideas disturbed. The cave men — ask 
Jack London if you don't believe It — were hairy 
monsters, not quite tailless, just cotton-tail-rabbity in 
their caudal appendage — hairy monsters, who 
munched raw beef and dragged women by the hair 
of the head to pitch-black, dark as night, smoke-be- 
grimed caves. That Is the way they got their 
wives. (Perhaps, if Little Zeke could speak, he 
would think he ought to sue moderns for libel. He 
might think that our " blond-beast " theories are a 
reflex of our own civilization. He might smile 
through his grinning jaws.) 

Anyway, there lies Little Zeke, a long time asleep, 
wrapped In cerements of fine woven cloth with 
fluffy- rufiles and fol-de-rols of woven blue jay and 
bluebird and hummingbird feathers round his neck. 
Zeke's people understood weaving. Also Zeke 
wears on his feet sandals of yucca fiber and matting. 
I don't know what our ancestors wore — according 
to evolutionists. It may have been hair and monkey 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 229 

pads. So if you understood as much about Zeke's 
history as you do about the Pyramids, you'd settle 
some of the biggest disputes in theology and ethnol- 
ogy and anthropology and a lot of other " ologles," 
which have something more or less to do with the 
salvation and damnation of the soul. 

How is it known that Zeke is a type of a race, 
and not a freak specimen of a dwarf? Because 
other like specimens have been found in the same 
area in the last ten years; and because the windows 
and the doors of the cave dwellings of the Gila 
would not admit anything but a dwarf race. They 
may not all have been twenty-four and thirty-six and 
forty inches; but no specimens the size of the mum- 
mies in other prehistoric dwellings have been found 
in the Gila. For instance, down at Casa Grande, 
they found skeletons buried in the gypsum dust of 
back chambers; but these skeletons were six-footers, 
and the roofs of the Casa Grande chambers were 
for tall men. Up in the Frijoles cave dwellings, 
they have dug out of the tufa dust of ten centuries 
bodies swathed in woven cloth; but these bodies are 
of a modern race five or six feet tall. You have 
only to look at Zeke to know that he is not, as we 
understand the word, an Indian. Was he an an- 
cestor of the Aztecs or the Toltecs? 

Though you cannot go out to the Gila by motor 
to a luxurious hotel, there are compensations. You 
will see a type of life unique and picturesque as in 
the Old World — countless flocks of sheep herded 
by soft-voiced peons. It is the only section yet left 



230 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

in the West where freighters with double teams and 
riders with bull whips wind in and out of the narrow 
canons with their long lines of tented wagons. It 
is still a land where game is plentiful as in the old 
days, trout and turkey and grouse and deer and 
bear and mountain lion, and even bighorn, though 
the last named are under protection of closed sea- 
son just now. I'm always afraid to tell an Easterner 
or town dweller of the hunt of these old trappers 
of the box cations; but as many as thirteen bear 
have been killed on the Gila in three weeks. The 
altitude of the trail from Silver City to the Gila 
runs from 6,000 to 9,150 feet. When you have 
told that to a Westerner, you don't need to tell any- 
thing else. It means burros for pack animals. In 
the Southwest it means forests of huge yellow pines, 
open upland like a park, warm, clear days, cool 
nights, and though in the desert, none of the heat 
nor the dust of the desert. 

It is the ideal land for tuberculosis, though all 
invalids should be examined as to heart action before 
attempting any altitude over 4,000 feet. And the 
Southwest has worked out an ideal system of treat- 
ment for tuberculosis patients. They are no longer 
housed in stuffy hotels and air tight, super-heated 
sanitariums. Each sanitarium is now a tent city — 
portable houses or tents floored and boarded half- 
way up, with the upper half of the wall a curtain 
window, and a little stove in each tent. Each pa- 
tient has, if he wants it, a little hospital all to him- 
self. There is a central dining-room. There is 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 231 

also a dispensary. In some cases, there are church 
and amusement hall. Where means permit it, a 
family may have a little tent city all to itself; and 
they don't call the tent city a sanitarium. They 
call it " Sun Mount," or " Happy Cafion," or some 
other such name. The percentage of recoveries is 
wonderful; but the point Is, the Invalids must come 
in time. Wherever you go along the borders of 
Old and New Mexico searching for prehistoric 
ruins, you come on these tent cities. 

Where can one see these cliff and cave dwellings 
of a prehistoric dwarf? Please note the points. 
Cliff and cave dwellings are not the same. Cliff 
dwellings are houses made by building up the front 
of a natural arch. This front wall was either in 
stone or sun-baked adobe. Cave dwellings are 
houses hollowed out of the solid rock, a feat not so 
difficult as it sounds when you consider the rock is 
only soft pumice or tufa, that yields to scraping more 
readily than bath brick or soft lime. The cliff 
dwellings are usually only one story. The cave 
dwellings may run five stories up inside the rock, 
natural stone steps leading from tier to tier of the 
rooms, and tiny porthole windows looking down 
precipices 500 to 1,000 feet. The cliff dwellings 
are mostly entered by narrow trails leading along 
the ledge of a precipice sheer as a wall. The first 
story of the cave dwellings was entered by a light 
ladder, which the owner could draw up after him. 
Remember It was the Stone Age: no metals, no fire- 
arms, no battering rams, nor devices for throwing 



232 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

projectiles. A man with a rock in liis hand in the 
doorway of either type of dwelling could swiftly 
and deftly and politely speed the parting guest with 
a brickbat on his head. Similar types of pottery 
and shell ornament are found in both sorts of dwell- 
ings; but I have never seen any cliff dweUings with 
evidences of such religious ceremony as in the cave 
houses. Perhaps the difference between cliff folk 
and cave folk would be best expressed by saying that 
the cliff people were to ancient life what the East 
Side is to us: the cave people what upper Fifth 
Avenue represents. One the riff-raff, the weak, the 
poor, driven to the wall; the other, the strong, the 
secure and defended. 

You go to one section of ruins, and you come to 
certain definite conclusions. Then you go on to an- 
other group of ruins; and every one of your con- 
clusions is reversed. For instance, what drove these 
races out? What utterly extinguished their civili- 
zation so that not a vestige, not an echo of a tra- 
dition exists of their history? Scientists go up to 
the Rio Grande in New Mexico, see evidence of 
ancient irrigation ditches, of receding springs and 
decreasing waters; and they at once pronounce — 
desiccation. The earth is burning up at the rate of 
an inch or two of water in a century; moisture is 
receding toward the Poles as it has in Mars, till 
Mars is mosdy arid, sun-parched desert round its 
middle and ice round the Poles. Good! When 
you look down from the cliff dwellings of Walnut 
Caiion, near Flagstaff, that explanation seems to 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 233 

hold good. There certainly must have been water 
once at the bottom of this rocky box-canon. When 
the water sank below the level of the springs, the 
people had to move out. Very well ! You come on 
down to the cave dwellings of the Gila. The bot- 
tom falls out of your explanation, for there is a 
perpetual gush of water down these rock walls from 
unfailing mountain springs. Why, then, did the 
race of little people move out? What wiped them 
out? Why they moved in one can easily under- 
stand. The box cafions are so narrow that half a 
dozen pigmy boys deft with a sling and stones could 
keep out an army of enemies. The houses were so 
built that a child could defend the doorway with a 
club; and where the houses have long hallways and 
stairs as in Casa Grande, the passages are so narrow 
as to compel an enemy to wiggle sideways; and one 
can guess the inmates would not be idle while the 
venturesome intruder was wedging himself along. 
Also, the bottoms of these box-cafions afforded ideal 
corn fields. The central stream permitted easy irri- 
gation on each side by tapping the waterfall higher 
up; and the wash of the silt of centuries ensured 
fertility to men, whose plowing must have been ac- 
complished by the shoulder blade of a deer used as 
a hoe. 

Modern pueblo Indians claim to be descendants of 
these prehistoric dwarf races. So are we descend- 
ants of Adam; but we don't call him our uncle; and 
if he had a say, he might disown us. Anyway, how 
have modern descendants of the dwarf types devel- 



234 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

oped Into six-foot modern Plmas and Papagoes? It 
is said the Navajo and Apache came originally from 
Athabasca stock. Maybe; but the Pimas and 
Papagoes claim their Garden of Eden right in the 
Southwest. They call their Garden of Eden by the 
picturesque name of " Morning Glow." 

How reach the caves of the dwarf race? 

To the Gila group, you must go by way of Silver 
City; and better go in with Forest Service men, for 
this is the Gila National Forest and the men know 
the trails. You will find ranch houses near, where 
you can secure board and room for from $1.50 to 
$2 a day. The " room " may be a boarded up tent; 
but that is all the better. Or you may take your 
own blanket and sleep in the caves. Perfectly safe 

— believe me, I have fared all these ways — when 
you have nearly broken your neck climbing up a 
precipice to a sheltered cave room, you need not 
fear being followed. The caves are clean as if 
kalsomined from centuries and centuries of wash 
and wind. You may hear the wolves bark — bark 

— bark under your pillowed doorway all night; but 
wolves don't climb up 600-foot precipice walls. Also 
if it is cold in the caves, you will find in the corner 
of nearly all, a small, high fireplace, where the glow 
of a few burning juniper sticks will drive out the 
chill. 

What did they eat and how did they live, these 
ancient people, who wore fine woven cloth at an era 
when Aryan races wore skins? Like all desert 
races, they were not great meat eaters; and the 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 235 

probabilities are that fish were tabooed. You find 
remains of game in the caves, but these are chiefly 
feather decorations, prayer plumes to waft petitions 
to the gods, or bones used as tools. On the other 
hand, there is abundance of dried corn in the caves, 
of gourds and squash seeds; and every cave has a 
metate, or grinding stone. In many of the caves, 
there are alcoves in the solid wall, where meal was 
stored; and of water jars, urns, ollas, there are rem- 
nants and whole pieces galore. It is thought these 
people used not only yucca fiber for weaving, but 
some species of hemp and cotton; for there are 
tatters and strips of what might have been cotton or 
linen. You see it wrapped round the bodies of the 
mummies and come on it in the accumulation of vol- 
canic ash. 

Near many of the ruins is a huge empty basin or 
pit, which must have been used as a reservoir in 
which waters were impounded during siege of war. 
Like conies of the rocks, or beehives of modern sky- 
scrapers, these denizens lived. The most of the 
mummies have been found in sealed up chambers at 
the backs of the main houses; but these could hardly 
have been general burying places, for comparatively 
few mummies have yet been found. Who, then, 
were these dwarf mummies, placed in sealed vaults 
to the rear of the Gila caves? Perhaps a favorite 
father, brother, or sister; perhaps a governor of the 
tribe, who perished during siege and could not be 
taken out to the common burial ground. 

Picture to yourself a precipice face from 300 to 



236 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

700 feet high, literally punctured with tiny porthole 
windows and doll house open cave doors. It is sun- 
set. The rocks of these box-caiions in the South- 
west are of a peculiar wine-colored red and golden 
ocher, or else dead gray and gypsum white. Owing 
to the great altitude — some of the ruins are 9,000 
feet above sea level, 1,000 above valley bottom — 
the atmosphere has that curious quality of splitting 
white light into its seven prismatic hues. Artists of 
the Southwestern School account for this by the fact 
of desert dust being a silt fine as flour, which acts 
like crystal or glass in splitting the rays of white 
light Into its prismatic colors; but this hardly ex- 
plains these high box-caiions, for there is no dust 
here. My own theory (please note, it is only a 
theory and may be quite wrong) Is that the air is so 
rare at altitudes above 6,000 feet, so rare and pure 
that It splits light up, if not in seven prismatic col- 
ors, then in elementary colors that give the reds and 
purples and fire tints predominance. Anyway, at 
sunset and sunrise, these box-canons literally swim 
In a glory of lavender and purple and fiery reds. 
You almost fancy it Is a fire where you can dip your 
hand and not be burned; a sea in which spirits, not 
bodies, swim and move and have their being; a sea 
of fiery rainbow colors. 

The sunset fades. The shadows come down like 
invisible wings. The twilight deepens. The stars 
prick through the Indigo blue of a desert sky like 
lighted candles; and there flames up In the doorway 
of cavern window and door the deep red of juniper 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 237 

and cedar log glow in the fireplaces at the corner of 
each room. The mourning dove utters his plain- 
tive wail. You hear the yap-yap of fox and coyote 
far up among the big timbers between you and the 
snows. Then a gong rings. (Gong? In a metal- 
less age ? Yes, the gong is a flint bar struck by the 
priest with a bone clapper.) The dancers come 
down out of the caves to the dancing floors in the 
middle of the narrow canon. You can see the danc- 
ing rings yet, where the feet of a thousand years 
have beaten the raw earth hard. Men only dance. 
These are not sex dances. They are dances of 
thanks to the gods for the harvest home of corn; or 
for victory. The gong ceases clapping. The camp- 
fires that scent the caiion with juniper smells, flicker 
and fade and die. The rhythmic beat of the feet 
that dance ceases and fades in the darkness. 

That was ten thousand years agone. Where are 
the races that danced to the beat of the priest's clap- 
per gong? 

I wakened one morning in one of the Frijoles 
caves to the mournful wail of the turtle dove; and 
there came back that old prophecy — it used to give 
me cold shivers down my spine as a child — that 
the habitat of the races who fear not God shall be 
the haunt of bittern and hoot owl and bat and 
fox. 

I don't know what reason there is for it, neither 
do the Indians of the Southwest know; but Casa 
Grande, the Great House, or the Place of the Morn- 



238 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

ing Glow, is to them the Garden of Eden of their 
race traditions; the scene of their mythical " golden 
age," when there were no Apaches raiding the crops, 
nor white men stealing land away; when life was a 
perpetual Happy Hunting Ground, only the hunters 
didn't kill, and all animals could talk, and the Desert 
was an antelope plain knee-deep In pasturage and 
flowers, and the springs were all full of running 
water. 

Casa Grande Is undoubtedly the oldest of all the 
prehistoric ruins In the United States. It lies some 
eighteen to twenty-five miles, according to the road 
you follow, south of the station called by that name 
on the Southern Pacific Railroad. It Isn't supposed 
to rain in the desert after the two summer months, 
nor to blow dust storms after March; but it was 
blowing a dust storm to knock you off your feet when 
I reached Casa Grande early in October; and a day 
later the rain was falling In floods. The drive can 
be made with ease In an afternoon; but better give 
yourself two days, and stay out for a night at the 
tents of Mr. Pinkey, the Government Custodian of 
the ruins. 

The ruin Itself has been set aside as a perpetual 
monument. You drive out over a low mesa of roll- 
ing mesqulte and greasewood and cactus, where the 
giant suaharo stands like a columned ghost of cen- 
turies of bygone ages. 

" How old are they? " I asked my driver, as we 
passed a huge cactus high as a house and twisted In 
contortions as If In pain. From tip to root, the 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 239 

great trunk was literally pitted with the holes pecked 
through by Httle desert birds for water. 

" Oh, centuries and centuries old," he said; " and 
the queer part is that in this section of the mesa 
water is sixty feet below the surface. Their roots 
don't go down sixty feet. Where do they get the 
water? I guess the bark acts as cement or rubber 
preventing evaporation. The spines keep the des- 
ert animals off, and during the rainy season the cac- 
tus drinks up all the water he's going to need for 
the year, and stores it up in that big tank reservoir 
of his. But his time is up round these parts; set- 
tlers have homesteaded all round here for twenty- 
five miles, and next time you come back we'll have 
orange groves and pecan orchards." 

Far as you could look were the little adobe houses 
and white tents of the pioneers, stretching barb wire 
lines round 160-acre patches of mesquite with a faith 
to put Moses to shame when he struck the rock for 
a spring. These settlers have to bore down the 
sixty feet to water level with very inadequate tools; 
and you see little burros chasing homemade wind- 
lasses round and round, to pump up water. It looks 
like " the faith that lays it down and dies." Slow, 
hard sledding is this kind of farming, but it is this 
kind of dauntless faith that made Phoenix and made 
Yuma and made Imperial Valley. Twenty years 
ago, you could squat on Imperial Valley Land. To- 
day it costs $1,000 an acre and yields high percent- 
age on that investment. To-day you can buy Casa 
Grande lands from $5 to $25 an acre. Wait till 



240 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

the water is turned in the ditch, and it will not seem 
such tedious work. If you want to know just how 
hard and lonely it is, drive past the homesteads just 
at nightfall as I did. The white tent stands in the 
middle of a barb wire fence strung along juniper 
poles and cedar shakes; no house, no stable, no build- 
ings of any sort. The horses are staked out. A 
woman is cooking a meal above the chip fire. A lan- 
tern hangs on a bush in front of the tent flap. Miles 
ahead you see another lantern gleam and swing, and 
dimly discern the outlines of another tent — the 
homesteader's nearest neighbor. Just now Casa 
Grande town boasts 400 people housed chiefly in one 
story adobe dwellings. Come in five years, and 
Casa Grande will be boasting her ten and twenty 
thousand people. Like mushrooms overnight, the 
little towns spring up on irrigation lands. 

You catch the first glimpse of the ruins about 
eighteen miles out — a red roof put on by the Gov- 
ernment, then a huge, square, four story mass of 
ruins surrounded by broken walls, with remnants of 
big elevated courtyards, and four or five other com- 
pounds the size of this central house, like the bas- 
tions at the four corners of a large, old-fashioned 
walled fort. The walls are adobe of tremendous 
thickness — six feet in the house or temple part, 
from one to three in the stockade — a thickness that 
in an age of only stone weapons must have been im- 
penetrable. The doors are so very low as to compel 
a person of ordinary height to bend almost double to 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 241 

enter; and the supposition is this was to prevent the 
entrance of an enemy and give the doorkeeper a 
chance to eject unwelcome visitors. Once inside, the 
ceilings are high, timbered with vigas of cedar 
strengthened by heavier logs that must have been 
carried in a horseless age a hundred miles from the 
mountains. The house is laid out on rectangular 
lines, and the halls straight enough but so narrow 
as to compel passage sidewise. In every room is a 
feature that has puzzled scientists both here and in 
the cave dwellings. Doors were, of course, open 
squares off the halls or other rooms; but in addition 
to these openings, you will find close to the floor of 
each room, little round " cat holes," one or two or 
three of them, big enough for a beam but without a 
beam. In the cave dwellings these little round holes 
through walls four or five feet thick are frequently 
on the side of the room opposite the fireplace. 
Fewkes and others think they may have been ven- 
tilator shafts to keep the smoke from blowing 
back in the room, but in Casa Grande they are in 
rooms where there is no fireplace. Others think 
they were whispering tubes, for use in time of war 
or religious ceremony; but in a house of open doors, 
would it not have been as simple to call through the 
opening? Yet another explanation is that they were 
for drainage purpose, the cave man's first rude at- 
tempt at modern plumbing; but that explanation falls 
down, too; for these openings don't drain in any 
regular direction. Such a structure as Casa Grande 



242 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

must have housed a whole tribe in time of religious 
festival or war; so you come back to the explanation 
of ventilator shafts. 

The ceilings of Casa Grande are extraordinarily 
high; and bodies found buried in sealed up cham- 
bers behind the ruins of the other compounds are 
five or six feet long, showing this was no dwarf race. 
The rooms do not run off rectangular halls as our 
rooms do. You tumble down stone steps through a 
passage so narrow as to catch your shoulders into a 
room deep and narrow as a grave. Then you crack 
your head going up other steps off this room to an- 
other compartment. Bodies found at Casa Grande 
lie flat, headed to the east. Bodies found in the 
caves are trussed up knees to chin, but as usual the 
bodies found at Casa Grande have been shipped 
away East to be stored in cellars instead of being 
left carefully glassed over, where they were found. 

Lower altitude, or the great age, or the quality 
of the clays, may account for the peculiarly rich 
shades of the pottery found at Casa Grande. The 
purples and reds and browns are tinged an almost 
iridescent green. Running back from the Great 
House is a heavy wall as of a former courtyard. 
Backing and flanking the walls appear to have 
been other houses, smaller but built in the same 
fashion as Casa Grande. Stand on these ruined 
walls, or in the doorway of the Great House, and 
you can see that five such big houses have once 
existed in this compound. Two or three curious 
features mark Casa Grande. Inside what must have 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 243 

been the main court of the compound are elevated 
earthen stages or platforms three to six feet high, 
solid mounds. Were these the foundations of other 
Great Houses, or platforms for the religious theat- 
ricals and ceremonials which enter so largely into 
the lives of Southwestern Indians? At one place is 
the dry bed of a very ancient reservoir; but how was 
water conveyed to this big community well? The 
river is two miles away, and no spring is visible here. 
Though you can see the footpath of sandaled feet 
worn in the very rocks of eternity, an irrigation 
ditch has not yet been located. This, however, 
proves nothing; for the sand storms of a single year 
would bury the springs four feet deep. A truer in- 
dication of the great age of the reservoir is the old 
tree growing up out of the center; and that brings 
up the question how we know the age of these an- 
cient ruins — that is, the age within a hundred years 
or so. Ask settlers round how old Casa Grande is; 
and they will tell you five or six hundred years. 
Yet on the very face of things, Casa Grande must 
be thousands of years older than the other ruins of 
the Southwest. 

Why? 

First as to historic records: did Coronado see 
Casa Grande in 1540, when he marched north across 
the country? He records seeing an ancient Great 
House, where Indians dwelt. Bandelier, Fewkes and 
a dozen others who have identified his itinerary, 
say this was not Casa Grande. Even by 1540, Casa 
Grande was an abandoned ruin. Kino, the great 



244 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

Jesuit, was the first white man known to have visited 
the Great House; and he gathered the Pimas and 
Papagoes about and said mass there about 1694. 
What a weird scene it must have been — the Sacaton 
Mountains glimmering in the clear morning light; 
the shy Indians in gaudy tunics and yucca fiber 
pantaloons crowding sideways through the halls to 
watch what to them must have been the gorgeous 
vestments of the priest. Then followed the eleva- 
tion of the host, the bowing of the heads, the raising 
of the standard of the Cross; and a new era, that 
has not boded well for the Pimas and Papagoes, was 
ushered in. Then the Indians scattered to their 
antelope plains and to the mountains; and the priest 
went on to the Mission of San Xavier del Bac. 

The Jesuits suffered expulsion, and Garcez, the 
Franciscan, came in 1775, and also held mass in 
Casa Grande. Garcez says that it was a tradition 
among the Moki of the northern desert that they 
had originally come from the south, from the Morn- 
ing Glow of Casa Grande, and that they had inhab- 
ited the box-canons of the Gila in the days when 
they were " a little people." This establishes Casa 
Grande as prior to the cave dwellings of the Gila 
or Frijoles; and the cave dwellings were practically 
contemporaneous with the Stone Age and the last 
centuries of the Ice Age. Now, the cave dwellings 
had been abandoned for centuries before the Span- 
iards came. This puts the cave age contemporane- 
ous with or prior to the Christian era. 

In the very center of the Casa Grande reservoir, 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 245 

across the doorways of caves in Frijoles Caiion, grew 
trees that have taken centuries to come to maturity. 

The Indian tradition is that soon after a very 
great flood of turbulent waters, in the days when the 
Desert was knee-deep in grass, the Indian Gods came 
from the Underworld to dwell in Casa Grande. 
(Not so very different from theories of evolution 
and transmigration, is it?) The people waxed so 
numerous that they split off in two great families. 
One migrated to the south — the Pimas, the Papa- 
goes, the Maricopas; the others crossed the moun- 
tains to the north — the Zunis, the Mokis, the 
Hopis. 

Yet another proof of the great antiquity is in the 
language. Between Papago and Moki tongue is 
not the faintest resemblance. Now if you trace the 
English language back to the days of Chaucer, you 
know that it is still English. If you trace it back to 
55 B. C. when the Roman and Saxon conquerors 
came, there are still words you recognize — thane; 
serf, Thor, Woden, moors, borough, etc. That Is, 
you can trace resemblances in language back 1,900 
years. You find no similarity in dialects between 
Pima and Moki, and very few similarities in physical 
conformation. The only likenesses are in types of 
structure in ancient houses, and In arts and crafts. 
Both people build tiered houses. Both people make 
wonderful pottery and are fine weavers, Moki of 
blankets and Pima of baskets; and both people as- 
cribe the art of weaving to lessons learned from 
their goddess, the Spider Maid. 



246 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

There are few fireplaces among the ancient dwell- 
ings of the Pimas and Papagoes, but lots of fire pits 
— sipapus — where the spirits of the Gods came 
through from the Underworld, Dancing floors, 
may pole rings, abound among the cave dwellings: 
mounds and platforms and courts among the Casa 
Grande ruins. The sun and the serpent were fa- 
vored symbols to both people, a fact which is easily 
understood in a cloudless land, where serpents sig- 
nified nearness of water springs, the greatest need 
of the people. You can see among the cave dwell- 
ings where earthquakes have tumbled down whole 
masses of front rooms; and both Moki and Papago 
have traditions of " the heavens raining fire." 

It has been suggested by scientists that the cliffs 
were cities of refuge in times of war, the caves and 
Great Houses were permanent dwellings. This is 
inferred because there were no kivas or temples 
among the cliff ruins, and many exist among the 
caves and Great Houses. Gushing and Hough and 
I think two or three others regard Casa Grande as 
a temple or great community house, where the 
tribes of the Southwest repaired semi-annually for 
their religious ceremonies and theatricals. 

We moderns express our emotions through the 
rhythm of song, of dance, of orchestra, of play, of 
opera, of art. The Indian had his pictographs on 
the rocks for art, and his pottery and weaving to 
express his craftsmanship ; but the rest of his artistic 
nature was expressed chiefly by religious ceremonial 
or theatrical dance, similar to the old miracle plays 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 247 

of the Middle Ages. For Instance, the Indians 
have not only a tradition of a great flood, but of a 
maiden who was drawn from the Underworld by her 
lover playing a flute; and the Flute Clans celebrate 
this by their flute dance. The yearly cleansing of 
the springs was as great a religious ceremony as the 
Israelites' cleansing of personal Impurity. Each 
family belonged to a clan, and each clan had a reli- 
gious lodge, secret as any modern fraternal order. 

The mask dances of the Southwest are much mis- 
understood by white people. We see In them only 
v/hat Is grotesque or perhaps obscene. Yet the spir- 
its of evil and the spirits of goodness are represented 
under the Indian's masked dances, just as the old 
miracle plays represented Faith, Hope, Charity, 
Lust, Greed, etc. There Is the Bird Dance repre- 
senting the gyrations of hummingbird, mocking-bird, 
quail, eagle, vulture. There Is the dance of the 
" mud-heads." Have we no " mud-heads " befud- 
dling life at every turn of the way? There is the 
dance of the gluttons and the monsters. Have we 
no unaccountable monsters in modern life? Read 
the record of a single day's crime; and ask yourself 
what mad motive tempted humans to such certain 
disaster. We explain a whole rigmarole of motives 
and inheritance and environment. The Indian 
shows it up by his dance of the monsters. 

Perhaps one of the most beautiful ceremonials is 
the corn dance. Picture to yourself the kivas 
crowded with spectators. The priests come down 
bearing blankets in a circle. The blanket circle sur- 



248 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

rounds the altar fire. The audience sits breathless 
in the dark. Musicians strike up a beating on the 
stone gong. A flute player trills his air. The blan- 
kets drop. In the flare of the altar fire is seen a 
field of corn, round which the actors dance. The 
priests rise. The blankets hide the fire. It is the 
Indian curtain drop. When you look again, there is 
neither pageant of dancers, nor field of corn. So 
the play goes on — a dozen acts typifying a dozen 
scenes in a single night. 

Good counsel, too, they gave in those miracle 
plays and ceremonial dances. " If wounded in bat- 
tle, don't cry out like a child. Pull out the arrow. 
Slip off and die with silence in the throat." " When 
you go to the hunt, travel with a light blanket." We 
talk of getting back to Mother Earth. The Indian 
chants endless songs to the wonder of the Great 
Earth Magician, creator of life and crops. Fire, 
too, plays a mysterious part in all theories of life 
creation; and this, too, is the subject of a dance. 

Then came dark days. Tribes from the far 
Athabasca came down like the Vandals of Europe 
— Navajo and Apache, relentless warriors. From 
Great Houses the people of the Southwest retired to 
cliffs and caves. When the Spaniards came with 
firearms and horses, the situation was almost one of 
extermination for the sedentary Indians; and they re- 
tired to such heights as the high mesas of the 
Tusayan Desert. Whether when white man stopped 
raid by the warlike tribes, it was better or worse for 
the peaceful Pima and Papago and Moki, it is hard 



CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 249 

to say; for the white man began to take the Indian's 
water and the Indian's land. It's a story of slow 
tragedy here. In the days of the overland rush to 
California, when every foot of the trail was beset 
by Apache and Navajo, it was the Pima and Papago 
offered shelter and protection to the white over- 
lander. What does the Indian know of " prior 
rights " in filing for water? Have not these waters 
been his since the days of his forefathers, when men 
came with their families from the Morning Glow to 
the box-caiions of the Gila and Frijoles? If prior 
rights mean anything, has not the Pima prior rights 
by ten thousand years? But the Pima has not a 
little slip of government paper called a deed. The 
big irrigation companies have tapped the streams 
above the Indian Reserve; and the waters have been 
diverted. They don't come to the Indians any 
more. All the Indian gets is the overflow of the 
torrential rains — that only brings the alkali wash 
to the surface of the land and does not flush it off. 
The Pima can no longer raise crops. Slowly and 
very surely, he is being reduced to starvation In a 
country overflowing with plenty, In a country whIcH 
has taken his land and his waters. In a country whose 
people he loyally protected as they crossed the con- 
tinent to California. 

What are the American people going to do about 
it? Nothing, of course. When the wrong has 
been done and the tribe reduced to extermination by 
inches of starvation, some muckraker will rise and 
write an article about it, or some ethnologist a 



250 CASA GRANDE AND THE GILA 

brochure about an exterminated people. Mean- 
time, the children of the Pimas and Papagoes have 
not enough to eat owing to the white man taking all 
their water. They are the people of " the Golden 
Age," " the Morning Glow." 

We drove back from Casa Grande by starlight 
over the antelope plains. I looked back to the 
crumbling ruins of the Great House, and its five com- 
pounds, where the men and women and children of 
the Morning Glow came to dance and worship ac- 
cording to all the light they had. Its falling walls 
and dim traditions and fading outlines seemed typ- 
ical of the passing of the race. Why does one peo- 
ple pass and another come? 

Christians say that those who fear not God, shall 
pass away from the memory of men, forever. 

Evolutionists say that those who are not fit, shall 
not survive. 

The Spaniard of the Southwest shrugs his gay 
shoulders under a tilted sombrero hat, and says 
Quien sabef " Who knows? " 



CHAPTER XV 

SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION, TUCSON, ARIZONA 

IT is the Desert. Incense and frankincense, 
fragrance of roses and resin of pines, cedar 
smells smoking in the sunlight, scent the air. 
Sunrise comes over the mountain rim in shafts of a 
chariot wheel; and the mountains, engirting the Des- 
ert round and round, are themselves veiled in a mist, 
intangible and shimmering as dreams — a mist shot 
with the gold of sunlight; and the air is champagne, 
ozone, nectar. Except in the dead heat of mid- 
summer, snow shines opal from the mountain peaks; 
and in the outline of yon Tucson Range, the figure 
of a giant can be seen lying prone, face to sunlight, 
face to stars, face to the dews of heaven, as the faces 
of god-like races ever are. 

You wind round a juniper grove — " cedars of 
Lebanon," the Old Testament would call it. There 
is the silver tinkle of a bell; and the flocks come 
down to the watering pools, flocks led by maidens, as 
in the days of Rachael and Jacob; and the shepherds 
— only they call them " herders," fight for first place 
round the water pool, as they did in the days of 
Rachael and Jacob. Then, you come to a walled 
spring where date palms shade the ground. And the 



252 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

maidens are there, " drawing water from the well," 
carrying water in ollas on their heads, bronzed stat- 
ues of perfect poise and perfect grace, daughters of 
the Desert, hard lovers, hard haters, veiled as all 
mysteries are veiled. 

You turn but a spur In the mountains: you dip 
Into a valley smoking with the dews of the morn- 
ing; or come up a mesa, — and a winged horseman 
spurs past, hair tied back by red scarf, pantaloons 
of white linen, sash of rainbow colors; and you are 
amid the dwellings of men. Strings of red chile 
like garlands of huge red corals hang against the 
sun-baked brick or clay. Curs come out and bark 
at the heels of your horse — that Is why the Oriental 
always called an enemy " a dog." Pottery makers 
look up from their kiln fires of sheep manure, at you, 
the remote passerby. The basket workers weave 
and weave like the Three Fates of Life. One old 
woman is so aged and wizened and Infirm that she 
must sit inside her basket to carry out the pattern of 
what life Is to her; and the sunlight strikes back from 
the heat-baked walls In a glare that stabs the eye; 
and you hear the tinkle of the bells from the water- 
ing pools. 

Then, suddenly, for the first time, you see It. 

You have turned a spur of the Mountains, dipped 
Into a valley, come up on the Mesa Into the sunlight, 
and there It Is — the eternal mountains with their 
eternal lavender veil round the valley like the tiered 
seats of a coliseum, the mist like a theater drop 
curtain where you may paint your own pictures of 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 253 

fancy, and in the midst of the great amphitheater 
rises an island rock; and on the island rock is a 
grotto; and in the grotto is the figure of the Mother 
of Christ — in purplish blue, of course, as betokens 
eternal purity — and below the island of rock in 
the midst of the amphitheater something swims into 
your ken that is neither of Heaven nor earth. 
White, glaringly white as the very spotlessness of 
Heaven, twin-towered as befitting the dual nature of 
man, flesh and spirit; pointed In its towers and 
minarets and belfries, betokening the reaching of 
the spirit of Man up to God; lions between the 
arches of the roofed piazzas, as betokening the lion- 
hearted spirit of Man fighting his enemies of Flesh 
and Spirit up to God I 

Palms before arched white walls shut out the 
world — Peace and Seclusion and Purity 1 

You dip into a valley, the scent of the cedars 
in your nostrils and lungs, the peace of God in your 
heart. Then you come up to a high mesa and you 
see the vision of the white symbol swimming be- 
tween earth and sky but always pointing skyward. 

Where are you, anyway: in Persia amid floating 
palaces, on the Nile, approaching the palaces of Al- 
lahabad in India, or coming up to Moorish minarets 
and twin towns of the Alhambra in Spain? 

Believe me, you are in neither Europe, Asia, nor 
Africa. You are in a much despised land called 
*' America," whence wealth and culture run off to 
Europe, Asia and Africa, to find what they call 
" art " and " antiquity." 



254 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

It is October 3rd in Tucson, Arizona ; not far from 
the borders of Old Mexico as the rest of the world 
reckon distance. The rain has been falling in tor- 
rents. Rain is not supposed to fall in the Desert, 
but it has been coming down in slant torrents and the 
sky is reflected everywhere in the road-side pools. 
The air is soft as rose petals, for the altitude is 
only 2,000 feet; too high to be languid, too low for 
the sting of autumn frosts. 

We motor, first, through the old Spanish town — 
relics of a grandeur that America does not know 
to-day, a grandeur more of spirit than display. The 
old Spanish grandee never counted his dollars, nor 
measured up the value of a meal to a guest. But he 
counted honor dear as the Virgin Mary, and made 
a gamble of life, and hated tensely as he loved. The 
old mansion houses are fallen in disrepute, to-day. 
They are given over, for the most part to Chinese 
and Japanese merchants; but through the open win- 
dows you can still see plazas and patios of inner 
courtyards, where oleanders are in perpetual bloom 
and roses climb the trellis work, and the parrot 
calls out " swear words " of Spanish pirate and 
highwayman. St. Augustine Mission, where heroes 
shed martyr blood, is now a saloon and dance hall, 
but where rags and tatters flaunted from the clothes 
lines of negro and Japanese and Chinese tenant, I 
could not but think of the torn flags that mark the 
most heroic action of regiments. 

From the Spanish Town of Tucson, which any 
other nation would have treasured as a landmark 




The Mission of San Xavier at Tucson, Arizona, as it was 
before its restoration 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 255 

and capitalized in dollars for the tourist, you pass 
modern mansions that wisely follow the Spanish- 
Moorish type of architecture, most suited to Desert 
atmosphere. 

Then you come on the Tucson Farms Company 
Irrigation project, now sagebrush and cactus land 
put under the ditch from Santa Cruz River and 
turned over to settlers from Old Mexico — who were 
driven out by the Revolution — for $25 an acre. 
You see the lonely eyed woman pioneer sitting at the 
door of the tent flap. 

Moisture steams up from the river like a morning 
incense to the sun. The Tucson Range of mountains 
shimmers. Giant cactus stand ghost-like, centuries 
old, amid the mesquite bush; and in the columnar 
bole of the cactus trees you see the holes where the 
little desert wren has pecked through for water in 
a waterless season. 

Then, before you know it, you are in the Papago 
Indian Reserve. The finest basket makers of the 
world, these Papagoes are. They make baskets of 
such close weave that they will hold water, and you 
see the Papago Indian women with jars — ollas — of 
water on their head going up and down from the 
water pools. Basket makers weave in front of the 
sun-baked adobe walls where hang the red strings 
of chile like garlands. On the whole, the Indian 
faces are very happy and good. They do not care 
for wealth, these children of the Desert. Give them 
" this day their daily bread," and they are content, 
and thank God. 



256 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

Then the mountains close in a cup round the shim- 
mering valley. In the center of the valley rises an 
island of rock, the rock of the Grotto of the Vir- 
gin; and a white dome and twin towers show, glare 
white, almost unearthly, with arches pointing to 
Heaven, and lions in white all along the roof typi- 
fying the strength that is of God. There is a dome 
in the middle of the roof line — that is the Moorish 
influence brought in by Spain. There are twin towers 
on each side; and in the towers on the right hand side 
are three brass bells to call to work and matins and 
vespers. It may be said here that the French Mis- 
sion may always be known by its single spire and 
cross; the Spanish Mission by its twin towers and 
bells. The French Mission rings its bell. The 
Spanish Mission strikes its bells with a hammer or 
gong. One utters cheer. The other sounds a rich, 
low, mellow call to worship. The walls and pillars 
and arches are all marble white; and you are looking 
on one of the most ancient Missions of the New 
Word — San Xavier del Bac, of Tucson, Arizona. 

The whole effect is so oriental as to be startling. 
The white dome might be Indian or Persian, but the 
pointed arches and minarets are unmistakably Moor- 
ish — that is, Moorish brought across by Spain. 
The entrance is under an arched white wall, and the 
courtyard looks out behind through arched white 
gateway to the distant mountains. 

Here four sisters of St. Joseph conduct a school 
for the little Papagoes ; and what a school it is I It 
might do honor to the Alhambra. Palms line the 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 257 

esplanade In front of the arched, walled entrance. 
Collie dogs rise lazily under the deep embrasures of 
the arched plazas. A parrot calls out some Spanish 
gibberish of bygone days. A snow-white Persian 
kitten frisks Its plumy tail across the brick-paved walk 
of the inner patio; and across the courtyard I catch 
a glimpse of two Shetland ponies nosing for notice 
over a fence beside an ancient Don Quixote nag that 
evidently does duty for dignitaries above Shetland 
ponies. An air of repose, of antiquity, of apartness, 
rests on the marble white Mission, as of oriental 
dreams and splendor or European antiquity and cul- 
ture. 

I ring the bell of the reception room to the right 
of the church entrance. Not a sound but the echo 
of my own ring! I enter, cross through the parlor 
and come on the Spanish patio or central courtyard. 
What a place for prayers and meditation and the 
soul's repose! Arched promenades line both sides 
of the inner court. Here Jesuit and Franciscan 
monks have walked and prayed and meditated since 
the Sixteenth Century. By the hum as of busy bees 
to the right, I locate the schoolrooms, and come on 
the office of the Mother Superior Aqulnias. 

What a pity so many of us have an early Impress 
of religion as of vinegar aspect and harsh duty hard 
as flint and unhuman as a block of wood. This 
Mother Superior is merry-faced and red-blooded 
and human and dear. She evidently believes that 
goodness should be warmer, dearer, truer, more at- 
tractive and kindly than evil; and all the little In- 



258 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

dian wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and 
human and red-blooded as the Mother Superior. 

A collie pup flounders round us up and down the 
court walk where the old missionary monks suffered 
cruel martyrdom. Poll, the parrot, utters senten- 
tious comment; and the Shetland ponies whinny 
greetings to their mistress. All this does not sound 
like vinegar goodness, does it? 

But it is when you enter the church that you get 
the real surprise. Three times, the desertion of this 
Mission was forced by massacre and pillage. Twice 
it was abandoned owing to the expulsion of Jesuit 
and Franciscan by temporal power. For seventy 
years, the only inhabitants of a temple stately as the 
Alhambra were the night bats, the Indian herders, 
the border outlaws of the United States and Mexico. 
Yet, when you enter, the walls are covered with won- 
derful mural painting. Saints' statues stand about 
the altar, and grouped about the dome of the groined 
ceiling are such paintings as would do honor to a 
European Cathedral. 

The brick and adobe walls are from two to six 
feet thick. Not a nail has ever been driven in the 
adobe edifice. The doors are of old wood in 
huge panels mortised and dovetailed together. The 
latch is an iron bar carved like a Damascus sword. 
The altar is a mass of gilding and purple. To be 
sure, the saints* fingers have been hacked off by 
wandering cowboy and outlaw and Indian; but you 
find that sort of vandalism in the British Museum 
and Westminster Abbey. The British Museum had 



1 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 259 

careful custodians. For over seventy years, this an- 
cient Mission stood open to the winds of heaven and 
the torrential rains and the midnight bats. Only 
the faithfulness of an old Indian chief kept the sacred 
vessels from desecration. When the fathers were 
expelled for political reasons, old Jose, of the 
Papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles 
till the padres should return, when he brought them 
from hiding. 

Gothic temples are usually built in one long, clear 
arch. The roof of San Xavier del Bac is a series 
of the most perfect groined domes, with the deep 
embrasures of the windows on each side colored shell 
tints in wave-lines. Because of the height and depth 
of the windows, the light is wonderfully clear and 
soft. The church is used now only by Indian chil- 
dren; and did Indian children ever have such a mag- 
nificent temple in which to worship? To the left 
of the entrance is a wonderful old baptismal font 
of pure copper, which has been the envy of all col- 
lectors. One wonders looking at the ancient vessel 
whether It was baptized with the blood of all the 
martyrs who died for San Xavier — Francesca Gar- 
cez, for instance? There Is a window In this baptis- 
try, too, that Is the envy of critics and collectors. 
It Is set more deeply In the wall than any window in 
the Tower of London, with pointed Gothic top that 
sends shafts of sunlight clear across the earthen 
■floor. 

From the baptistry I ascended to the upper tow- 
ers. The stairs are old timber set in adobe and 



26o SAN XAVIER DEL BAG MISSION 

brick, through solid walls of a thickness of six feet. 
The view from the belfries above is wonderful. 
You see the mountains shimmering in the haze. 
You see the little square adobe matchbox houses of 
Papago Indians, with the red chile hanging against 
the wall, and the women coming from the spring, 
and the men husking the corn. You wonder if when 
San Xavier was besieged and besieged and be- 
sieged yet again by Apache and Navajo and Pima, 
the beleaguered priests took refuge in these towers, 
and came down to die, only to save their Mission. 
Against Indian arms, it may be said, San Xavier 
would be an impregnable fortress. Yet the priests 
of San Xavier were three times utterly destroyed by 
Indians. 

When you come to seek the history of San Xavier, 
you will find it as difficult to get, as a guide out to 
the Mission. As a purely tourist resort, leaving 
out all piety and history, it should be worth hundreds 
of thousands of dollars a year to Tucson. Yet it 
took me the better part of a day to find out that 
San Xavier is only nine miles and not eighteen from 
Tucson. 

And this Is typical of the difficulty of getting the 
real history of the place. Jesuit Relations of New- 
France have been published in every kind of edition, 
cheap and dear. Jesuit Relations of New Spain, 
who knows? The Franciscans succeeded the Jesuits; 
and the Franciscans do not read the history of the 
Jesuits. It comes as a shock to know that Spanish 
padres were on the Colorado and Santa Cruz at 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAG MISSION 261 

the time Jacques Cartler was exploring the St. Law- 
rence. We have always believed that Spanish 
conquistadores slaughtered the Indians most ruth- 
lessly. Study the mission records and you get an- 
other impression, an impression of penniless, 
friendless, unprotected friars " footing " it 600, 700, 
900 miles from Old Mexico to the inmost recesses 
of the Desert caiions. In late days, when a friar 
set out on his journey, twenty mounted men acted 
as his escort; and that did not always save him from 
death; for there were stretches of the journey ninety 
miles without water, infested every mile of the way 
by Apaches; and these stretches were known as the 
Journeys of Death. When you think, of the ruth- 
less slaughter of the conquistadores, think also of 
the friars tramping the parched sand plains for 900 
miles. 

While Fray Juan de la Asuncion and Pedro Nadol 
are the first missionaries known in Arizona about 
1538, Father Kino was the great missionary of 1681 
to 1690, officiating at the Arizona Missions of San 
Xavier del Bac and Tumacacori. There are reports 
of the Jesuits being among the Apaches as early as 
1630 — say early as the days of the Jesuits in Can- 
ada; but who the missionaries were, I am unable to 
learn. Rebellion and massacre devastated the Mis- 
sions in 1680 and in 1727; but by 1754, the mis- 
sionaries were back at San Xavier and had 
twenty-nine stations commanding seventy-three dif- 
ferent pueblos. In 1767, for political reasons, the 
Jesuits suffered expulsion; and the Franciscans came 



262 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

in — tramping, as told before, 600 and 900 miles. 
It was under the Franciscans that the present struc- 
ture of San Xavier was built. Garcez was the most 
famous of the Franciscans. He spent seven years 
among the Pimas and Papagoes and Yumas; but 
one hot midsummer Sunday — July 17, 178 1 — 
during early mass, the Indians rose and slew four 
priests, all the Spanish soldiers and all the Spanish 
servants. Garcez was among the martyrs. San 
Xavier, as it at present stands, is supposed to have 
been completed in 1797; but in 1827-9, came an- 
other political turnover and all foreign missionaries 
were expelled. Tumacacori and San Xavier were 
always the most important of the Arizona Missions. 
Originally quite as magnificent a structure as San 
Xavier, Tumacacori has been allowed to go to ruin. 
Of late, it has been made a United States monument. 
It is a day's journey from Tucson. 

To describe San Xavier is quite impossible, except 
through canvas and photograph. There is some- 
thing intangibly spiritual and unearthly in its very 
architecture; and this is the spirit in which it was 
originally built. At daybreak, a bell called the 
builders to prayers of consecration. At nightfall, 
vesper bells sent the laborer home with the blessing 
of the church. For the most part, the workers were 
Mexicans and Indians; and as far as can be gathered 
from the annals, voluntary workers. The Papagoes 
and Pimas at that time numbered 5,000, of whom 500 
lived round the Missions, the rest spending the sum- 
mers hunting in the mountains. 





i T. 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 263 

When the American Government took over Ari- 
zona, San Xavier went under the diocese of New 
Mexico. From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Tucson 
was 600 miles across desert mountains and canons, 
every foot of the way infested by Apache warriors; 
and the heroism of that trail was marked by the same 
courage and constancy as signalized the founding 
and maintenance of the other early Spanish Mis- 
sions. 

It would be a mistake to say that San Xavier has 
been restored. Restoration implies innovation; and 
San Xavier stands to-day as it stood in the sixteen 
hundreds, when Father Kino, the famous mathe- 
matician and Jesuit from Bavaria, came wandering 
up from the Missions of Lower California, preach- 
ing to the Yumas and Pimas of the hot, smoking 
hot, Gila Desert, and held mass in Casa Grande, the 
Great House or Garden of Eden of the Indian's 
Morning Glow. A lucky thing it is that restoration 
did not imply change in San Xavier; for the Mis- 
sion floats in the shimmering desert air, unearthly, 
eerie, unreal, a thing of beauty and dreams rather 
than latter day life, white as marble, twin-towered, 
roof domed and so dazzling in the sunlight to the 
unaccustomed eye that you somehow know why 
rows of restful, drowsy palms were planted in line 
along the front of the wall. 

Perhaps it is that it comes on you as such a com- 
plete surprise. Perhaps it Is the desert atmosphere 
in this cup of the mountains; but all the other mis- 
sions of the Southwest are adobe gray, or earth 



264 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

color showing through a veneer of drab white- 
wash. 

There is the giant, century-old desert cactus 
twisted and gnarled with age like the trees in Dante's 
Inferno, but with bird nests in the pillared trunks, 
where little wrens peck through the bark for water. 
You look again. A horseman has just dismounted 
beneath the shade of a fine old twisted oak; but be- 
yond the oak the vision is there, glare, dazzling, 
white, twin-towered and arched, floating in mid-air, 
a vision of beauty and dreams. 

Life seems to sleep at San Xavier. The moun- 
tains hemming in the valley seem to sleep. The 
shimmering blue valley sleeps. The sunlight sleeps 
against the glare white walls. The huge old mor- 
tised door to the church stands open, all silent and 
asleep. The door of the Mission parlor stands open 

— sunlight asleep on a checkered floor. You enter. 
Your footsteps have an echo of startling impudence 

— modern life jumping back into past centuries! 
You ring the gong. The sound stabs the sleeping 
silence, and you almost expect to see ghosts of Fran- 
ciscan friar and Jesuit priest come walking along the 
arcaded pavement of the inner courtyard to ask you 
what all this modern noise is about; but no ghosts 
come. In fact, no one comes. San Xavier is all 
asleep. You cross through the parlor to the inner 
patio or courtyard, arched all around three sides 
with the fourth side looking through a wonderfully 
high arched gateway out to the far mountains. 
Polly turns on her perch in her cage, and goes back 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 265 

to sleep. The white Persian kitten frisks his white- 
plumed tail; and also turns over and goes to sleep. 
Two collie dogs don't even emit a " woof." They 
arch their pointed noses with the fine old aristocratic 
air of the unspoken question: what are you of the 
Twenty Century doing wandering back into the 
mystery and mysticism and quietude of the religious 
sixteen hundred? But if you keep on going, you 
will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the 
little Pimas and Papagoes in the schoolrooms, 

San Xavier, architecturally, is sheer delight to the 
eye. The style is almost pure Moorish. The yard 
walls are arched in harmony with the arched outline 
of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will no- 
tice the Spanish lion at the Intersection of all the 
roof arches. In front of the Mission buildings Is a 
walled space of some sixty by forty feet, where the 
Indians used to assemble for discussion of secular 
matters before worship. On the front wall in high 
relief are placed the arms of St. Francis of Assisi, 
and in the sacristry to the right of the altar you will 
find mural drawings and a painting of Saint Ig- 
natius. Thus San Xavier claims as her founders 
and patrons both Franciscan and Jesuit. This is 
easily explained. The Franciscans came up over- 
land across the Desert from the City of Mexico. 
The Jesuits came up inland from their Mission on 
the Gulf of California. Father Kino, the Jesuit, 
from a Bavarian university, was the first missionary 
to hold services among the Pimas and Papagoes, 
and if he did not lay the foundations of San Xavier, 



266 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION * 

then* they were laid by his immediate successors. 
The escutcheon of the Franciscans on the wall is 
a twisted cord and a cross on which are nailed the 
arms of the Christ and the arm of St. Francis. The 
Christ arm is bare. The Franciscan's arm is cov- 
ered. 

Unlike other Missions built of adobe, San Xavier 
is of stone and brick. It is lOO by thirty feet. The 
transept on each side of the nave runs out twenty- 
one feet square. The roof above the nave is sup- 
ported by groined arches from door to altar. The 
cupola above the altar is fifty feet to the dome. 
The other vaults are only thirty feet high. The 
windows are high in the clearstory and set so deeply 
in the casement that the light falling on the mural 
paintings and fresco work is sifted and softened. 
Practically all the walls, cupola, dome, transept, 
nave, are covered with mural paintings. There is 
the coming of the Spirit to the Disciples. There 
is the Last Supper. There is the Conception. 
There is the Rosary. There is the Hidden Life of 
the Lord. 

The main altar has evidently been constructed 
by the Jesuits; for the statue of St. Francis Xavier 
stands below the Virgin between figures of St. 
Peter and St. Paul and God, the Creator. On the 
groined arches of the dome are figures of the Wise 
Men, the Flight to Egypt, the Shepherds, the An- 
nunciation. Gilded arabesques colored in Moorish 
shell tints adorn the main altar. Statues of the 
saints stand in the alcoves and niches of the pillars 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 267 

and vaults. Two small doors lead up to the towers 
from the main door. Look well at these doors and 
stairways. Not a nail has been driven. The doors 
are mortised of solid pieces. The first flight of 
stairs leads to the choir. Around the choir are more 
mural paintings. Two more twists of the winding 
stair; and you are in the belfry. Twenty-two more 
steps bring you to the summit of the tower — a gal- 
leried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground, 
where you may look out on the whole world. 
. Pause for a moment, and look out. The moun- 
tains shimmer in their pink mists. The sunlight 
sleeps against the adobe walls of the scattered In- 
dian house. You can hear the drone of the chil- 
dren from the schoolrooms behind the Mission. 
You can see the mortuary chapel down to the right 
and the lions supporting the arches of the Mission 
roof. Father Kino was a famous European scholar 
and gentleman. He threw aside scholarship. He 
threw aside comfort. He threw aside fame; and 
he came to found a Mission amid arabs of the Ameri- 
can Desert. The hands that wrought these paint- 
ings on the walls were not the hands of bunglers. 
They were the hands of artists, who wrought in love 
and devotion. Three times, San Xavier was dyed 
in martyr blood by Indian revolt. 

Priests, whose names even have been lost in the 
chronicles, were murdered on the altars here, thrown 
down the stairs, cut to pieces in their own Mission 
yard. Before a death which they coveted as glory, 
what a life they must have led. To Tucson Mis- 



268 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

sion was nine miles; but to Tumacacori was eighty; 
to Old Mexico, 900. Occasionally, they had escort 
of twelve soldiers for these long trips; but the sol- 
diers' vices made so much trouble for the holy fath- 
ers that the missionaries preferred to travel alone, 
or with only a lay brother. Sandaled missionaries 
tramped the cactus desert in June, when the heat was 
at its height; and they traversed the mountains when 
winter snows filled all the passes. They have not 
even left annals of their hardships. You know that 
in such a year. Father Kino tramped from the Gulf 
of California to the Gila, and from the Gila to the 
Rio Grande. You know in such another year, nine- 
teen priests were slain in one day. On such another 
date, a missionary was thrown over a precipice; or 
slain on the high altar of San Xavier. And always, 
the priests opposed the outrages of the soldiery, the 
injustice of the ruling rings. Father Kino petitions 
the royal house of Spain In 1686 that converts be not 
forcibly seized and " dragged off to slavery in the 
mines, where they were buried alive and seldom sur- 
vived the abuse." He gets a respite from the King 
for all converts for twenty years. He does not per- 
mit converts to be taken as slaves in the mines or 
slaves in the pearl fisheries; so the ruling rings of 
Old Mexico obstruct his enterprises, lie about his 
Missions, slander him to the patrons who supply 
him with money, and often reduce his missions to 
desperate straits; but wherever there is a Mission, 
Father Kino sees to it that there are a few goats. 
The goats supply milk and meat. 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 269 

The fathers weave their own clothing, grow 
their own food, and hold the fort against the 
enemy as against the subtle designs of the Devil. 
These fathers mix their own mortar, make 
their own bricks, cut their own beams, lay the plaster 
with their own hands. Now, remember that the 
priests who did all this were men who had been art- 
ists, who had been scholars, who had been court 
favorites of Europe. Father Kino was, himself, 
of the royal house of Bavaria. But jealousy left 
the Missions unprotected by the soldiers. Soldier 
vices roused the Indians to fury; and the priests 
were the first to fall victims. Go across the Moki 
Desert. You will find peach orchards planted by 
the friars; but you cannot find the graves of the dead 
priests. We considered the Apaches a dangerous 
lot as late as 1880. In 1686, In 1687, in 1690, 
Father Kino crossed Apache land alone. I cannot 
find any record of the Spanish Missions at this pe- 
riod ever receiving more than $15,000 a year for 
their support. Ordinarily, a missionary's salary 
was about $150 a year. Out of that, if he employed 
soldiers, he must pay their wages and keep. 

Well, by and by, the jealousy of the governing 
ring, kept from abusing the Indians by the priests, 
brought about the expulsion of the Jesuits. The 
Franciscans took up the work where the Jesuits left 
off. Came another political upheaval. The Fran- 
ciscans were driven out. San Xavier's broken win- 
dows blew to the rains and winds of the seven 
heavens. Cowboys, outlaws, sheep herders, housed 



270 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION 

beneath mural paintings and frescoes that would have 
been the pride of a European palace. Came Ameri- 
can occupation; and San Xavier was — not restored 
— but redeemed. It was completely cleaned out 
and taken over by the church as a Mission for the 
Indians. 

To-day, no one worships in San Xavier but the 
little Indian scholars. Look at the drawings of 
Christ, of the Virgin, of the Wise Men ! Look at 
the dreams of faith wrought into the aged and beau- 
tiful walls 1 Frankly — let us be brutally frank 
and truthful, was it all worth while? Wouldn't 
Kino have done better to have continued to grace 
the courts of Bavaria? 

In the old days, Pima and Papago roped their 
wives as in a hunt, and if the fancy prompted, abused 
them to death. On the walls of San Xavier is the' 
Annunciation to the Virgin, another view of birth 
and womanhood. In the old days, the Indians killed 
a child at birth, if they didn't want it. On the 
walls of San Xavier are pictured the wise men ador- 
ing a Child. Spanish rings and trusts wanted little 
slaves of industry as American rings and trusts want 
them to-day. Behold a Christ upon the walls set- 
ting free the slaves I Was it all worth while? It 
depends on your point of view and what you want. 
Though the winds of the seven heavens blew through 
San Xavier for seventy years and bats habited the 
frescoed arches, it stands to-day as it stood two 
centuries ago, a thing unearthly, of visions and 



SAN XAVIER DEL BAG MISSION 271 

dreams ; pointing the way, not to gain, but to good- 
ness; making for a little space of time on a little 
space of Desert earth what a peaceful heaven life 
might be. 



THE END 



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